Smoke Wisps
by mumbling mice
Summary: A BLU spy and a RED sniper ignite a forbidden friendship, and eventual romance, behind the backs of their teammates. Excuse the shitty summary.
1. The Dilemma

_Be polite. Be efficient. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet._

The sniper adjusted his sunglasses and squinted through the scope.

There was a flash of red in the corner. The sniper caught sight of a BLU Demoman drunkenly teetering along, popping off grenades behind him and occasionally taking swigs from a suspicious brown bottle tucked in his utility belt.

Sniper focused on his bobbing head, and the gunshot rang out with a satisfying _pow_.

"Sorry about the other eye, mate," the sniper muttered, observing his damage through the crosshairs with a soft smirk.

He raised his head and flicked his hat up, about to reload his gun when he heard a faint creak behind him. He jerked his head over his shoulder and, clutching his kukri tightly, surveyed the room. Nothing.

He paused a moment and held his breath, listening carefully; still nothing. He exhaled and pushed his sunglasses about his nose, relieved that he was alone, but when he went to sheath his kukri he felt a light touch on his shoulder.

Instinctively, he grabbed at whatever caused the sensation with quick reflects and grasped onto what felt like a wrist. As soon as he clutched it, the nothingness began to form into a masked man in a blue pinstriped suit. He wore an especially baffled expression, as if he were appalled by the audacity of the sniper to even dare try and defend himself. In the hand the sniper clutched was a particularly nifty little switchblade, no doubt intended for the sniper's throat.

The spy hastily drew his primary weapon, an ornately engraved handgun, but the sniper jumped up and, still clutching the spy's wrist tightly, kicked the gun out of the Frenchman's hand. It conveniently flew out the small window the sniper had been using.

"_Mon pistolet_!" the spy cried out.

With his free hand, the sniper took advantage of the distraction and yanked the switchblade from the other man's clutches, closed it (with some difficulty), and shoved it into his back pocket. Drawing his kukri and holding it against the spy's neck, he growled, "Gimme one good reason, wanker."

"With pleasure," the spy snarled, tearing open his suit jacket to reveal extensive wiring strapped throughout his chest. "If I die, you die as well."

The sniper inhaled sharply through his nose, but refused to loosen his grip on the knife. "What if I cut those wires off, and _then_ kill you?" he snapped.

"The only person capable of properly disconnecting these wires without short-circuiting himself is the BLU Engineer. Try it and you're fried, bushman."

The sniper wrinkled his nose. "You're lyin'."

"Hm. Perhaps," the spy purred. "Perhaps _not_. Kill me now and you'll know for sure."

The sniper squinted at him for a moment, as if trying to prey answers from the spy's expression, but procured nothing. He removed the kukri from the spy's neck. The Frenchman cleared his throat haughtily and rubbed the spot where the knife had been pressed against it.

"It seems that we are at an impasse, _mon ennemi_," the spy noted, reaching into a pocket within his suit jacket and removing his cigarette case. "I suggest you just give up."

"Like hell I will," the sniper snapped, making his way to the entrance of the room.

"Pardon?" the spy replied, looking up as the sniper slammed the door shut and locked it with a key. "_Mon dieu!_ Since when are there _doors_ that can be _locked_?"

"Since the concept of creative license, wanker," the sniper answered, pocketing the key along with the switchblade. "You are right in one thing. We're at a bloody impasse. I can't kill you because you'll explode. You can't kill me because you're a useless piker. Nothing to do but sit here and wait." The sniper stalked back to his post and picked up his gun, an undeniable twitch directly correlated to the spy's presence afflicting his left eye.

"And you expect me to sit by and watch as you cowardly attack my teammates from afar, not even giving them the decency to know who it was that killed them?" the spy demanded with flared nostils, bitterly taking a drag on his cigarette.

The sniper glanced over at the spy and raised his eyebrows. "I do hope you're joshing me, mate."

"I am not your mate, jar-man," the spy sneered, crossing his arms. "You and your bottles of piss disgust me."

"Say anything else and you'll be covered in the bleedin' stuff, ya ponce," the sniper responded coldly, squinting through the scope of his rifle.

"I suppose it is some kind of fetish, covering people with your own waste?" the spy mused snidely. "If so, you'd make a lot more money doing pornography. I am afraid your assassin skills are rather lax."

The sniper stood and turned. His expression was difficult to make out past his tinted sunglasses, but the spy was of the assumption that he wasn't quite pleased. The Australian swiftly grabbed a half-filled jar of warm, yellowish liquid and threateningly held it over his head. The spy recoiled in disgust.

The sniper smirked. "What'sa matter? Afraid of a little bit of piss? Don't want to dirty up your fancy suit, is it?"

"I will not apologize for actually being concerned about my appearance," the spy scoffed, straightening his tie poignantly. "Unlike some people."

The sniper sniffed indignantly and tossed the sloshing Mason jar aside. "Don't matter what I look like," he grumbled, turning back to the small window. "Not like anybody's gonna see me up here, anyway."

The BLU spy leaned against the wooden wall, watching the sniper thoughtfully before sucking on his cigarette again. "That is terribly depressing," he concluded after a moment's thought.

The sniper ignored him and fired his rifle at a quick blue blur. Several feet down, a BLU scout's head exploded with a satisfying pop.

"That'll slow you down, ya twitchy hooligan," sniper growled, a smile spreading on his lips. Behind him he heard the spy mumbling softly. The Australian promptly jerked his neck around, worried that the BLU sneak might have had a hidden radio on him—trying to call up reinforcements to save him from the dirty bushman, was he?

"Oy!" the sniper snarled. "What're mumblin' about?"

"I'm counting," the BLU spy answered venomously, as if it was an obvious answer. "You do realize you have _sixteen jars of urine_ up here with you?"

"Why're you counting my jarate?"

"Why do you have sixteen jars of piss?"

"I—I asked you first!" the sniper retorted lamely.

Their spat was interrupted by a _fwoop_, a crash, and an explosion that most likely ruptured the very foundation of the already unsteady building.

"MAGGOT!" The RED soldier's booming voice was somehow capable of surpassing even the engineers' loudest sentry guns in sheer volume and magnitude.

The sniper sheepishly poked his head through the window. Immediately a bullet from the enemy sniper hit the edge of the window.

"Son of a—!" The sniper ducked back down as the spy burst into a fit of pompous laughter. "Stuff it," the sniper snapped, before peeking his head over the slightest edge of the window.

The soldier was staring up at him (or at least it seemed he was; it was impossible to tell how the soldier saw at all with that helmet covering his eyes) with a sour frown tugging on his face. His rocket launcher, emitting wisps of smoke like the spy's cigarette, was perched on his shoulder. "I HOPE YOU ACTUALLY PLAN ON KILLING SOME OF THESE BLU-BALLED BASTARDS, PRIVATE, INSTEAD OF PLAYING TEA PARTY WITH YOUR JARS OF BODILY FLUIDS."

Another shot grazed the edge of the window. "I am!" the sniper hissed angrily.

"THEN I WANT TO SEE MORE EXPLODING HEADS!" The soldier saluted him, and the teetered off.

"Crazy bloody bastard," the sniper mumbled to himself, scratching his head underneath his hat. "Nearly gave me a right heart attack, there."

"He also blew your cover," the BLU spy drawled, blowing rings of smoke into the air. He casually stepped aside as an arrow pierced the wall only a few inches away from his shoulder.

"Christ!" the sniper exclaimed, gathering up his rifle and pressing up against the wall to the immediate left of the tiny window.

_Pop. Pop. Pop._

Blue grenades began to fly in through the window. They exploded with an ear-ringing crack upon contact with the creaky, yet oddly resilient wooden floor. In their wake they left charcoal black scorch marks. The sniper did not want to know what kind of marks they'd leave on his body… if there would be any of his body left to mark.

The sniper drew in a quick breath of air and nervously chewed on the inside of his cheek, trying to think. Truth be told, he wasn't a good planner. He planted himself in a nest and picked off the ants below. He rarely thought ahead, even off the battlefield; hell, if he did, maybe he'd be living in an actual house.

"Why don't you open the door?" the enemy spy suggested with a sweeping, over-exaggerated gesture towards the exit, using the same tone he might put on if he was talking to a three-year-old.

"Oh, you'd like that wouldn't you?" The sniper laughed bitterly. A rogue grenade landed near the pile of mason jars. The Australian's gut clenched as five jars of urine shattered and soaked the floor with their contents. What a waste.

"So you'd rather sit in here and get blown up then unlock the door?" The BLU spy somehow managed to keep an unusually calm demeanor as grenades repeatedly detonated around him. Granted, they'd all grown quite used to the ear-splitting noise, rumbling sensation of explosions, and the ever-looming threat of violent (yet not-so-permanent) death by now.

The sniper kept to himself, but he at least had some selvage of loyalty for his team. "If unlocking the door means you get to slip away and kill the rest of my team, then _yes_. I would rather sit here and get blown up."

"And what exactly would I kill them _with_?" the spy scoffed, rolling his eyes. "My knife is in your pocket and you knocked my revolver out the window."

The sniper patted his back pocket, almost as if he didn't believe the spy. "That's right." For a moment he nearly considered the enemy spy's suggestion, but instead of taking the advice the Australian pushed his aviators up the bridge of his nose and squinted at the smirking Frenchman. "Then again, I could just take you out now, with me."

The smug expression faded from the spy's face. "No," he whispered, the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips.

"Why not? I'm gonna die anyway if I stay here," the sniper told his enemy through gritted teeth as he advanced on the spy. He whipped kukri out. "If I've got a chance to take you out, I should take hold of that right now. I'll make sure to stab you in the back, nice and quick, so you know how it feels, too."

With the sniper's back turned to the window, he couldn't possibly have noticed the rocket hurdling through the air, shot by an especially relentless BLU soldier, aimed straight for the spot between his shoulder blades. The spy, however, did.

In retrospect, the spy's next action was probably one of the stupidest things he had ever done in his life. Well, perhaps second stupidest, if you count the incident with the squid and the underage nun back in Tuscany. Regardless, he wasn't quite sure what he was thinking when he seized the RED sniper by the shoulders and heaved them both out of danger's way. The rocket instead crashed through the door, reducing it to splinters and leaving a gaping hole to escape from.

The sniper was sprawled against the wall, slumped like an especially gangly marionette doll. He gingerly raised his arm and pushed up his hat, which had fallen down over his face.

The spy was gone.


	2. The Heartburn

The area was uncharacteristically quiet. It could, of course, be some sort of ploy. The sniper scanned the window on the other side through his scope, curious to see if there was a BLU sniper looking back at him.

No one.

The RED sniper would have dwelled on it longer, perhaps made an effort to check some of the other typical hiding spots, but a hot, nauseating sensation ran up his esophagus. He lowered his gun and put his hand to his chest, then glanced at the empty coffee mug on the ledge. He drank his coffee decaf, which meant he didn't get the jitters, but that didn't stop him from getting god awful heartburn. To be fair, he _had_ drank about six cups without eating anything all day.

He considered seeking out the medic to see if he had any Pepto-Bismol, but decided against it. Might not be the most opportune time.

He inhaled, making a mental note to pack Rolaids next time. For now, he'd just have to suck it up and bear through it.

He picked his rifle back up as a cool breeze came in through the window and tickled his bare head. He went to squint through the scope, but jolted back with a sudden horrific realization.

_His head was bare_.

He slapped his hand on his head—no hat to be found.

The sniper dropped his rifle with a clatter and spun around to find his hat floating in midair, a mere few inches from his face.

In a flurry of curling smoke wisps, the BLU spy materialized before him, wearing both his hat and a particularly unnerving grin.

"_Boo_." The spy let the word slink out of his mouth slowly and deliberately as he savored the look of surprise, and gradual fury, on the sniper's face.

Immediately the Australian lunged and wrapped his fingers around the spy's throat. The hat flew off and toppled onto the ground. The smile on the spy's face became teeth clenched in struggle. His cigarette stub dropped from his lips and his gloved hands clawed on the sniper's ever-tightening grip, and the bushman could feel the veins in his neck tensing. The bit of skin his mask left bare was beginning to turn a frustrating shade of purple, and his skinny pinstriped legs twitched and jerked from the strain. His Italian leather shoes scuffed sloppily on the floor.

The sniper probably could have killed him right then and there. But he didn't. He had a horrible, fleeting moment of empathy when he looked the spy in the eyes and remembered how he knocked him out of danger's way. The wall still bore the hole from the destruction.

He let go of the spy and sheathed his kukri.

The Frenchman took a moment to compose himself, gulping in deep breaths of air and massaging his neck. He cleared his throat, and then removed a handkerchief from a hidden pocket within his suit jacket.

"Why?" he said in a hoarse voice, dabbing his forehead with the cloth. "Why did you stop? Why did you not kill me?"

"You saved me from getting hit by the rocket, last time you came up here. I don't have a clue why you did that, but I can't just pretend it never happened. So, I spared your life too. Now we're even." He crossed his arms and stared down out the spy.

"That makes a lot of sense," the spy answered, gingerly standing up. "But I wouldn't have done that."

"I'm not a sneaky, backstabbing son of a bitch, though, am I?" the sniper scoffed, still watching the spy suspiciously as he dusted off his suit. "I try to maintain a bit of courtesy."

The spy raised an eyebrow, and then poignantly glanced at the sniper's stack of urine-filled Mason jars. "_Oui_. The utmost courtesy." He turned on his heel towards the splintered area that used to be a doorway.

"You're leaving?" the sniper said, dropping his arms to his sides. He was almost insulted.

"You wanted me to _stay_?" the spy asked, smirking over his shoulder.

"No—I—I'm just—" the sniper stuttered, flustered. "I expected you to try to kill me."

"I have better backs to stab, bushman. _Je suis desolee_." He opened his cigarette case with an expert flip, but rather than pulling out a smoke, he pressed a small button hidden within. In a cloud of the same curling trickery that appeared when he cloaked himself, the spy morphed into the RED medic.

The disguised spy straightened himself and yanked at his illusory rubber gloves.

"_Auf Wiedersehen_, Herr Sniper," the faux medic said, in a flawlessly accurate rendition of the real medic's speech. The sniper almost would have believed it was the real doctor, had he not seen the enemy spy transform right there before him.

The spy promptly galloped off, no doubt in search of the heavy weapons guy to latch on to. The sniper cringed—the poor bastard wouldn't stand a chance.

He stood there for a moment, after the medic doppelganger had left. Certainly he could run and warn someone, shout out to the others that there was a spy disguised as the medic… but he didn't.

Instead he picked up his hat, walked back over to the window, and sat down on top of the same crate he had been at before.

He went to replace his hat before picking up his rifle, but noticed a strangely uncomfortably sensation. It felt like a tag, but he was quite sure he'd cut the tag off of his hat ages ago.

He whipped it off and peered inside to find a small slice of paper tucked within the inside lining. He pinched the corner and slid it out.

The words were scrawled in blue ink. The sniper mouthed them silently as he read.

_What do you think about when you sit all alone in your old gum tree, Kookaburra?_

The sniper frowned, crumpled the slip of paper, and tossed it over his shoulder. He had no desire to dwell on cryptic notes from spies.

As he sat in that nest of his, though, he couldn't help but notice it drift through his mind every once in a while.

The sniper thought over many things up in his old gum tree. There wasn't much else to do but let your mind wander a bit sometimes, as long as you made sure to keep your main focus on the inane bloodshed down below.

He thought about a lot of things, but he had no intention of ever sharing his contemplations with anyone. There was no point in reevaluating his thought process whilst on the job, because he sure as hell wasn't going to bother responding to the spy's childish note.

Besides, he'd always been the kind who kept to himself.


	3. The Family

The sniper shifted uncomfortably on the sagging floral couch. Growing up it had felt just fine, even if it was a little worn in and a bit stained. But now, it felt like he was sitting in doll furniture. He felt too big, too tall, too out of place.

On the wall was a cuckoo clock. Its loud, grating ticking always unnerved the sniper. It always seemed much too forward for the quant little living room. On the hour it spat out not a cuckoo bird, but a mustachioed kookaburra. The sniper averted his eyes down to his hat, which he was nervously fiddling with in his hands, suddenly remembering the stupid note from the bloody BLU spy.

His mother bustled in, carrying a tray of pink lemonade. She was a stout woman, a good foot or two shorter than her son, with pink cheeks and a generally optimistic disposition. The sniper always had this strange thought that if she was an animal, she'd be a hen, clucking and bustling and picking.

She set the tray down on the coffee table and then plopped herself down next to the sniper. She slapped her hands against his cheeks and frowned. "You haven't been eating, have you?"

"No, I—I've been eating just fine, mum."

"Hmm." She frowned and inspected him in that strange way mothers do, then plucked off his sunglasses. "I don't know why you insist on wearing those indoors, the lighting's so dim. Your father hasn't gotten around to replacing the light bulbs." She licked her thumb and smoothed his hair the same way she would when he was eleven. "Such a handsome boy. Always was. If only you took care of yourself." She tsk'd. "Now, don't be so quiet, pumpkin." She turned away from him and fished out knitting needles and a ball of yarn from somewhere within the depths of the fathomless couch. "How've you been? Have you been sleeping well?" She tsk'd again. "You look so gaunt. Have you gotten around to settling down in a nice house, yet?"

"I…" Her knitting needles clicked together, gossiping between themselves. "I'm working on that."

"Mm." She pursed her lips together. "Best not mention that to your father."

"Yeah, where is he?"

"In his shed."

The sniper exhaled through his nose. His father had a habit of disappearing for hours on end in his shed when his son came to visit. His eyes scanned the wall in front of him, adorned with flowered wallpaper and portraits. There was the school photos from every year—seeing them always made the sniper feel a little jolt in his stomach, terribly embarrassed of his gawky, lopsided, big-eared adolescence. Above them were a few wedding photos, too—the sniper couldn't help but notice that his father looked miserable even at his own wedding. And then… then there was Steve. Pictures of the sniper had stopped soon after his last year of high school, but his brother Steve's entire goddamn life was chronicled on the wall. Steve's first mustache, Steve's wedding, Steve's wombat farm…

"When he comes in," his mother said, snapping him back into the conversation. "Try not to mention the J-O-B."

"Yeah… yeah, that's probably a good idea."

His mother paused, then set down her knitting and rested her plump, warm hand on his knee. "It's not too late to go to med school, Lawrence."

The sniper winced. Not only was he grossly unused to hearing his own name, he had been subjected to the "doctor" talk more times than he could possibly count.

"I don't want to go to med school, mum," he mumbled, fumbling with his hat again. "'Sides, I know a doctor. He and I make the same amount of cash, I swear it."

Her eyes widened. "You're friends with a doctor?"

"Well, not really friends, but—"

A light bell tinkled from down the hall; someone had opened the door. A pair of boots scrapped against the welcome mat.

"Muriel?" The sniper's father was making his way towards the living room. "How's about you put on a pot of tea and—" He stopped at the door frame, his drooping face turning into a low, bitter frown. "You're still here," he observed coldly, crossing his thick arms over his overalled chest.

"I should probably be going, actually." The sniper hastily stood up and fumbled to pull his sunglasses out from his shirt pocket.

"Need to get to the schoolyard early, I suppose? Want to make sure you've got a good spot to shoot at the kids when they go out to play, then?" His father leaned against the doorway, arms crossed tight and nose wrinkled in disgust.

"Oh, dear," the sniper's mother groaned, burying her face in her hands.

"I don't shoot _kids_, Dad!" the sniper snapped, crumpling his hat in his fist.

"Then maybe you should stop driving around in that bloody van, because it certainly says otherwise!"

"There's nothing wrong with my van!"

"Oh, sure. If you want to look like a registered sex offender!"

The clock struck on the hour, and the kookaburra popped out, chortling at the sniper's misfortune. The note he had found in his hat came drifting back into his mind.

_What do you think about when you sit all alone in your old gum tree, Kookaburra?_

The man drew in a sharp breath and smashed his hat on his head. "Have a good day," he growled, storming out through the screened front door. The bell tinkled cheerfully, like it was trying to brighten his spirits, but hearing it just pissed him off.

His van was parked a long ways down the narrow dirt road that stretched out in front of the small house, and he found himself angrily storming away from an uncomfortably long time. He chanced a glance over his shoulder and saw his mother standing on the porch. She raised her hand to wave, but he turned his head before he noticed.

He slapped his hands on the steering wheel of his van. He knew his mother was still watching him but he couldn't bring himself to look back at her. He wriggled his keys out of his pocket and jammed them into the ignition. The old girl took a few turns to start up but once she got going, she was a steady enough drive.

He didn't quite care what he looked like, driving his van. It was convenient and it worked. That was all there was to it.

He guided the van down along the road, fiddling with the radio. He needed to find something to get his mind off of things.

That was one of the problems with his job. For the most part it was good, but it gave you too much time to think. It's not like now, in the van, where he could turn on music and get lost. He had to be all eyes and ears.

If that bloody spy really wanted to know what the sniper thought about so badly, he should've come to visit his parents' house with him.


	4. The Voyeur

The BLU spy cracked his knuckles. It was an old habit of his, and normally it would be an unfortunate habit for a man who relied on stealth, but he had learned to train himself to do everything quietly.

As he looked down at his gloved hands, he noticed one of his cufflinks was missing. _Merde_, he thought bitterly, rolling his eyes. Of course, the day he decides to wear his favorite cufflinks one of them falls off. Murphy's Law loved him far too much.

Perhaps he'd tried searching the area later tonight, after the battle. He could ask the engineer for a metal detector… but did he really care enough to bother? He owned so many others… Besides, if the man had been gracious enough to lend him wires to tape under his suit to create the impression of a bomb strapped across his chest, it would just be a burden to ask for me.

The RED sniper exhaled across the room, then scratched his stubbled cheek.

The BLU spy was technically supposed to be trying to sap the sentry out in the courtyard, but the truth was, he didn't feel like it. The spy liked to think of himself as a sophisticated, scheduled man, but in truth he was quite ornery. Unlike _some_ members of his team, he lacked the fervor to passionately and repeatedly attempt to thwart the enemy. He'd never been one to take sides, nor be loyal too quickly.

So instead of sapping the sentry the beeped and whirred and shot three spinning missiles at the slightest hint of blue, he was sitting cross-legged on top of a barrel, high above the thoughtless bloodshed.

He couldn't quite put his finger on why he found the Australian so intriguing. He wasn't one to dwell on these sorts of things.

He supposed it was the concept of privacy that the man maintained. The spy was a clever man, and had come to observe that the quiet ones always have the most to say.

The sniper exhaled again, and leaned back. The spy couldn't see his eyes past the tinted sunglasses, but the man's brows were knotted in frustration. He scooted away from the window he'd been watching from, and hastily fumbled a crumpled letter out of his pocket. It had been already been ripped open, quite clumsily. The spy cringed—letter openers existed for a _reason_.

He unfolded the note within; a small photograph fluttered to the ground. His curiosity getting the better of him, the spy tiptoed over to get a better view. The photograph was a picture of a brown-haired little girl of about three years old, bearing a piano key grin and holding a bubble wand. The spy cocked his head and blinked down to the letter, standing precariously over the sniper's shoulder.

_Lawrence,_

_I'm very sorry for the other day. Your father and I feel terrible. You know we love you, pumpkin. It's just hard for us to understand. But, as long as you're happy. Speaking of which, I do hope you've started looking into getting a house like we talked about. Steve has added another acre to his wombat farm. His little Sheila is growing up so fast! I put a picture of her, for you to see. Isn't she such a darling? Kate is a lovely mother. I hope, once you get your home, you think about settling down and finding a nice wife. I know how shy you can be around women, though, pumpkin. Would you like me to set you up with the Wilsons' daughter down the road? She's five or so years younger than you and a bit plump, but very sweet. Write back soon._

_Love, Mum._

The spy had one of those rare moments when he forgot to be quiet by emitting a horse-like snort from his nose.

The sniper's head snapped up and the letter crumpled in his fist.

"Hope that ain't who I think it is," he growled in a low tone. The spy sidled smoothly out of the sniper's reach, slightly disturbed by the man's ability to appear to be looking directly at him, despite his invisibility.

"Take that bloody cloak off, ya cowardly piker!" he snapped at the naked air, jumping to his feet and withdrawing his kukri.

The spy slinked towards the exit, creeping cautiously.

"You're a creepy, sick son of a bitch, you know that?" the sniper continued. He was waving the knife, but he was spinning on the spot, unsure of where to address his words. "Sneaking around, but never man enough to _do_ anything—I—_I'm_ a _professional_, you pansy bastard! I don't need to deal with bastards playing games with me!"

A pair of heavy boots began to clomp up the stairs. The spy flattened himself against the wall as the RED demoman bounded past him.

"Hullo, lad," the Scotsman slurred pleasantly as he loaded an array of sticky bombs into his launcher. "What're you shoutin' about all alone up here, aye? Havin' a lover's quarrel with the windowsill?" He rubbed his palm under his swollen nose and swayed over to the window, where he began to pop sticky bombs down near the entrance of their base.

"Thought I heard a spy."

"You want me to send the pyro up here to sweep the place?"

The BLU spy recoiled, wrinkling his nose. There was nothing he hated more than the enemy pyro, the soulless shell of a human that lit poor, innocent spies aflame and then cackled like a primate while the flesh of his enemies smoldered. _Baiseur_.

"Nah, it's alright. He's probably gone now."

"Probably." The demoman backed up from the window and reached for his trademark bottle of scrumpy. "Oh, aye? Who's this little lass?" He crouched down and picked up the photograph of the little girl.

"My niece, Sheila."

"I didn't know you had a niece, boy."

"I do."

"She's mighty cute." He handed the picture back to the sniper.

"Thanks mate." He tucked the picture into his shirt pocket.

The demoman began to waddle towards the exit. He paused a moment, right where the spy was pressed up against the wall. For a moment, the spy was almost entirely sure that the Scotsman had sensed his presence. But instead, he just pressed his hand to his stomach and let out an impressive, albeit disgusting, belch.

The spy wrinkled his nose, revolted by the disgusting explosives expert. Was it really so difficult for Mann Co. to find _somewhat_ civilized human beings to work for them? Either they were stupid and insane or gross and insane or fat and insane or, worst of all, _clever_ and insane.

And then there was that sniper.

The spy was the kind of person who had always found people interesting. He didn't necessarily _like_ them, but they intrigued him. It helped, being able to observe people the way he did. It made it possible for him to _become_ someone, because he was capable of picking up their habits and dialects and posture. His line of work was half theatre and half psychology.

By this point the spy had very little trouble figuring people out. The sniper… the Frenchman couldn't put his finger on it. He couldn't explain it. That's exactly what drew him to the sniper; _he couldn't figure him out_.

The spy decided to leave and get on with sapping the stupid sentry. He didn't particularly want to, but… _c'est la vie_.


	5. The Handkerchief

The sniper saw something glinting out of the corner of his eye. He frowned and crouched down, pinching the little silver piece between his forefinger and thumb. He held it up to his face and peered over his sunglasses.

It was a cufflink in the design of two crossed pistols. The pistols, even though they were very small, had an astounding amount of detail to them. He rolled it around between his fingers. It was in terrific condition… either it was never worn or it was expertly polished.

Either way, there was only one person who would be sneaking around clad in cufflinks.

He plopped the little piece of haberdashery in his shirt pocket with the photograph.

The two objects nestled together for quite some time up in his roost. Down below, he heard the engineer cry out in frustration—the BLU spy must have sapped his sentry, because soon after he heard an explosion of metal and wires.

"_Dagnabit dammit nabbit daggit!_" Sometimes the engineer's muffled swears reminded the sniper of Bugs Bunny. He grinned to himself.

There was a scuffle behind him. The demoman was back, walking a bit more soberly than he had been before. The sniper typically wasn't one to judge, but he certainly did feel a tad more comfortable when the demoman wasn't hammered out of his mind.

"Hello again, lad," the Scotsman drawled.

"Back to set down more sticky bombs?" the sniper asked, leaning away from the window and pulling back his rifle.

"Aye," the demoman approached the window, hoisting up his bomb launcher. "Oh, boy?" He pointed a thick finger down at the sniper's feet. "You're boot. It's untied."

"Oh, it is. Didn't notice that." He crouched down to tie it, and as he bent over, the cufflink slipped out of his pocket and clinked on the floor.

The demoman side-eyed the little piece of jewelry, then swiftly bent down to snatch it. The Australian was quicker, cupping his hand over it and slowly dragging it towards himself like a cat with a ball of yarn.

"Dropped my cufflink," he mumbled, slipping it back into his pocket.

"That's not your cufflink," the demoman said a little too quickly.

"Oh, no. It is."

The demoman shifted uncomfortably with a sour look on his face. His one eye glared at the sniper in an unsettlingly sober way. "Then why's it in your pocket, hm? Why isn't it on your cuffs? Why've you only got one?"

"Lost the other one, so I took this one off and kept it in me pocket."

"You tell lies, bushman!" the demoman's slurred Scottish dialect started slipping into something more guttural and European. "That cufflink is _far_ too extravagant for someone like _you_ to own! Silver crossed pistols—_obviously_ it was a custom piece!"

The sniper smiled lightly at the disguised spy, amused by the fact that he wasn't even trying anymore.

"If you wanted you cufflink back, Spy, you could have just asked politely. S'what normal people do." He plucked it back out of his pocket and flicked it into the air with a pop of his thumb, like he was igniting a lighter. The spy caught it by clapping it between his hands; open contact he morphed back into his usual blue-suited form.

"_Normal_," the spy scoffed, attaching the cufflink back to his suit. "I do not think anyone here would know 'normal' if it danced naked in their faces, Lawrence."

The sniper froze. "What did you call me?"

The spy smiled coyly, withdrawing his cigarette case. "Lawrence. It is your name, is it not?"

"But…" The sniper wasn't quite threatened by the fact the spy knew his name as he was baffled, and slightly embarrassed. He tried wracking his brain. How could he have possibly…?

The crumpled letter, tucked in his back pocket.

Of _course_.

Without a moment's hesitation, the sniper threw his fist against the spy's nose.

"Ach!" the spy cried out as the unexpected punch sent him stumbling down to his knees. The cigarette case clattered to the ground. The sniper, breathing heavily from the sudden rush of adrenaline, looked down at the blood smeared on his knuckles.

The spy turned back to look at the sniper. Bright red blood blossomed beneath his balaclava and dribbled down into his snarling lips. "_Fils de pute_," he growled, the top row of his teeth stained red. He ran his tongue over them and grinned devilishly. "You got blood on my suit."

The spy produced to rip his balisong out of his pocket and switch it open with the flourish of an especially depraved magician. Knife withdrawn, he pounced at the sniper like a cat with its claws bared. The sniper grabbed him by the wrists and kneed him in the stomach, but not before the spy managed to sink his knife into the sniper's arm.

"Ah, piss!" The sniper released the spy and ripped the stinging knife out of his arm. He cried out in pain as he pulled it out; it was more painful coming out than going in. A patch on his arms began to turn several shades a darker crimson. Light-headed, the sniper backed against the wall and slid down, clenching his teeth.

The spy began to laugh in a breathless, hysterical sort of way as he held his stomach. Still laughing he straightened up and panted, "I like this game, Lawrence." The blood was dripping down his chin but he didn't notice, he just continued to grin and got closer to his RED enemy.

"What game?" the sniper inquired in a gravelly tone as he shot daggers from his eyes at the French bastard.

"This game of ours, _mon ami_, this brilliant game of cat-and-mouse." He was standing over the sniper now, a sleek, magnificent bastard who was somehow able to be dapper as hell even with blood blooming all over his jaw. He reached into his jacket and the sniper flinched. With a smirk, the spy removed a large, light blue handkerchief. He dropped it over the sniper and let it flutter into the man's lap. "Please, clean yourself up."

The sniper pinched the hankie and held it up before him, frowning, as the spy picked his cigarette case back up.

"Ugh, I will do it for you if you are so inept." The spy snatched the handkerchief back and crouched down next to his RED rival.

The sniper watched, wordless and puzzled, as the spy pushed his sleeve up and gently wrapped the handkerchief around the oozing knife wound.

"I do not wish to kill you, Lawrence," he said as he tied the handkerchief. He looked up at the sniper and studied his expression. "You don't believe me."

The sniper continued to stare at the Frenchman silently. In truth, he wasn't quite sure what to think or what to say. The sniper wasn't a very social person to begin with. Regular interaction proved to be a struggle for him; how was he possibly supposed to react to this spy who tried to stab him one minute, and then kiss the wound better the next?

"I wouldn't believe me, either, honestly," the spy mumbled with a cigarette between his teeth. He still hadn't bothered to clean his face, which struck the sniper as strange for such an appearance-invested man to do. "I suppose that is the one thing I regret about going into espionage." He lit the cigarette. "It is almost entirely impossible to form trusting relationships."

"You're insane," the sniper finally spoke.

The spy smirked. "No," he said, taking a drag from his cigarette and blowing smoke into the air. "Unlike the rest of these animals, I am not insane. And neither are you. I believe we have more in common than either of us would like to admit."

The sniper frowned at the ground. Subconsciously, his good hand rested over the bandaged wound. It was wrapped tight, but not too tight. Just snug enough. "What do you want from me?" he asked, still refusing to look at the spy.

"Nothing you would ever be willing to give me."

With those words, the spy melted into the air, disappearing before the sniper's very eyes.

The sniper sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the throbbing sting in his arm. He hoisted himself up on his feet and started towards the window, where he'd get back to work and try to get his mind off of cryptic spies.

"Although." Hot, smoky breath breath suddenly curled into the sniper's ear just when he thought he was alone. It made the hair on the back of his neck dance. "Perhaps you would be. You're a very introspective man, Lawrence. I can never quite be sure what you're thinking." The voice got farther away as the spy presumably headed towards the exit. "That's the fun of it all."


	6. The Intelligence

"_I can't get no satisfaction__  
><em>_I can't get no satisfaction__  
><em>_'Cause I try  
><em>_And I try  
><em>_And I try  
><em>_And I try__  
><em>_I can't get no,  
><em>_I can't get no"_

The radio sometimes had a habit of crackling, even when the skies were clear. The sniper would bang his fist on the dashboard and usually that would get the sound back.

Something toppled over behind him as he hit a bump in the road—things were typically falling all over the place in his van, but today he was especially on edge, straightening his mirror and taking a glimpse behind to check on the precious blue suitcase.

"Listen, Stretch." The engineer had approached him outside of the RED base that day after the battle, carrying BLU's intelligence which their heavy weapons guy had captured. "This intel here has got to get to headquarters. Closest RED outpost is about two hours from here. I know you've got your van and like to drive about a lot. Thought maybe you wouldn't mind dropping it off."

"S'not a problem," the sniper had shrugged. He didn't exactly have any plans.

"Mighty nice of you, pardner." The engineer grinned widely and pushed the suitcase into the sniper's arms. The Australian was surprised by the weight, buckling slightly. The wound in his arm, still sore from the spy's hack job, throbbed painfully.

"Christ," he'd gasped. "You got a body in here?"

The engineer shrugged as he walked off towards his pick-up truck, a humble, yet sturdy brown pick-up truck he kept parked near the entrance. "Dunno. Could be. You never know with those son of a bitchin' BLUs."

"_When I'm drivin' in my car__  
><em>_And a man comes on the radio__  
><em>_He's telling me more and more__  
><em>_about some useless information__  
><em>_supposed to fire my imagination"_

The sniper typically wasn't one for popular music these days, but quite liked the Stones. This song was a couple years old so it didn't come on the radio as often as it did when it first came out. It was a nice treat to hear it.

He decided that he was content, driving down this lonely road, listening to a good song on the radio.

That couldn't last long, though, of course. When he went over another bump he heard the shatter of glass and the stomach-dropping splat of liquid. He kept driving and glanced over his shoulder, trying to see what had broken, but the eventual smell of stale ammonia that began to seep into the air gave it away.

"Ah, _piss_," he grumbled, jerking the van to a halt and climbing to the back.

The sniper wasn't a particularly messy person. People often seemed surprised by this—the truth was, he didn't have much to make a mess with. He learned to live a pretty minimally material lifestyle. Sometimes he'd take awhile to empty the ashtray, and maybe he'd leave an empty bag of potato chips on the floor for a day too long, but for the most part he tried to keep things somewhat orderly.

That was the problem about the Jarate. It took up a _lot_ of room.

He'd acquired a somewhat embarrassing habit of bottling his urine outside of the battlefield. He couldn't quite pinpoint when and why—it _could_ have to do with convenience. As typical of Australians, he had an overabundance of vegemite jars at his disposal. No sense in letting it all go to waste, right?

And it's always useful to have more than less.

Isn't it?

Shattered glass glittered the gray carpeted floor; beneath it, a dark, wet stain blossomed and ran down across the entire rug.

"Bloody brilliant," he sighed, trying to be thankful that at least his Murphy bed was folded up and hadn't been touched.

He carefully picked up the pieces of broken glass, mistakenly nicking his calloused fingers a few times. Sucking on his bleeding thumb, he tossed them off the side of the road, making sure not to get any on the pavement; if someone ran over glass they'd get an awful popped tire.

He laid towels down over the stain and stomped on them with his heavy boots, trying to soak up the mess without touching it. He honestly felt quite idiotic, marching around on his own piss. This should not be something grown men do.

After a moment he stopped and stared down at the damp towels, now slightly tinged with dark yellow. His rug wasn't wet anymore, but now his towels were.

He decided to just dump them off the side of the road, too. He could get new ones, anyway.

The smell still lingered in the air, and the sniper made a mental note to pick up air freshener along with the towels. Maybe apricot scented, this time.

_At least the intel didn't get ruined_, he told himself as he was about to climb back into the driver's seat. But he paused, and glanced back behind him with a horrible feeling pulling at his chest.

It was gone.

His head darted wildly around the cramped interior of the camper. It was a huge, blue suitcase; wasn't hard to miss. He was _positive_ he had placed it right on top of the cooler. Had he thrown it out with the towels and the glass? No, that wouldn't make any sense—

A familiar, smoky fragrance slowly crept over the scent of urine.

"Don't bother looking for it, Lawrence." The only part of the BLU spy the sniper could see was his arm, which he waved in a blasé manner from his place in the passenger's seat. "It wasn't the real intelligence."

The sniper sighed heavily. He was too exhausted to get angry.

The spy turned and poked his head through the gap between the two front seats. His cigarette was held tightly between his wide, grinning teeth. The stained balaclava had been replaced by a fresh, clean one.

"How…?" The sniper gaped at him, scratching his head underneath his hat.

"You would not believe me, but I will tell you anyway." He sucked on the cigarette. "The soldier got this cockamamie scheme to trick you and the rest of your REDs. He hid the real intelligence underneath the desk, and had me disguise as the suitcase. So yes, there was, indeed, a body in the attaché. Or rather, the attaché _was_ a body." He blew smokes rings. "Although I must admit I was a little put off by how much you seemed to be struggling with me. Either I have gained weight, or you are weaker than you appear. Let us hope it is the latter."

"How… how did you disguise as a suitcase? That doesn't make any—"

"Creative license."

The sniper crossed his arms, frowning.

"By the way, it was I who broke your jar of piss. I was thirsty and under the mistaken impression that it was apple juice. _Desolee_."

The sniper turned and climbed out of the back door of his camper.

"_Where_ are you going?"

He walked around the van to the passenger's side and yanked open the door.

"Get. Out." He stepped back and pointed southward.

The spy raised his chin critically and stared at the sniper in an apprehensive fashion. "Why?"

"Because you can't be in my van."

"Why?" The spy was smiling lightly now; the sadistic bastard seemed to revel in pushing people's buttons.

"Because you're on BLU!" The sniper spat, throwing his arms out in the air in exasperation. Was it not obvious? They were enemies, weren't they?

"So?" The Frenchman crossed his legs and pinched his cigarette between his forefinger and middle finger. "Bushman, we are off duty. You yourself value professionalism in the work place. To my knowledge, professionals do not hold grudges against those who are also just doing their job."

The BLU spy had stabbed the sniper right in his dignity. Make that sadistic and _clever _bastard.

"Besides," the spy added, gesturing to their surroundings. "How exactly would you propose I travel this wasteland? I'd be stranded."

The sniper exhaled in frustration, then slammed the door shot. The spy grinned mischievously as he plopped himself down into the driver's seat.

"I'll take you as far as you need to go. That's _it_."


	7. The Diner

"_Well, she wrote me a letter  
><em>_said she couldn't live without me no mo'  
><em>_Listen Mister, can't you see  
><em>_I got to get back to my baby once mo'  
><em>_Anyway, yeah"_

"Ugh." The spy let his displeasure for the track be known by making a particularly grating guttural noise and drumming his fingers against the armrest.

The sniper leaned over and twisted the knob, sorting through the stations. He didn't mind The Box Tops so much, but he'd rather just change the song than listen to the spy complain. He settled on the Spencer Davis Group—they were actually pretty good. Come to think of it, music these days wasn't _too_ bad, so long as it wasn't that sappy Frankie Valli or Beatles shit.

"_Well my pad is very messy__  
><em>_And there's whiskers on my chin__  
><em>_And I'm all hung up on music__  
><em>_And I always play to win__  
><em>_I ain't got no time for lovin'__  
><em>_Cause my time is all used up__  
><em>_Just to sit around creatin'__  
><em>_All that groovy kind of stuff."_

"You are trying to kill me, aren't you, Lawrence?" the spy scoffed, crossing his arms. "This must be revenge for stabbing you in the arm."

"_I'm a man__  
><em>_Yes I am__  
><em>_and I can't help__  
><em>_but love you so__."_

"S'my van," the sniper grunted, pushing his glasses up his nose with his thumb. "My radio. My choice."

The sniper, in truth, wasn't quite accustomed to having other people in his van with him. The last time he'd shared the van was back in Oregon, when the scout asked for a ride into Portland. It didn't end well; the blood took two weeks to wash out of the driver's seat.

The sniper wasn't used to passengers, and he _certainly_ was not used to passengers like the man currently sitting next to him, that suited enigmatic bastard who still managed to have a frustrating sort of charisma to him.

He didn't know what to think. He was certainly no engineer; he wasn't someone who solved puzzles. And the spy was most definitely a _puzzle_.

The sniper… he really didn't understand people. They made no sense to him, with their mind games and hang-ups and grudges. He often felt like an observer, which, as a sniper, technically was his job; to survey and strike.

But he felt like an observer the _entire_ time, a third party observer, on the outside looking in. He wasn't so much comfortable with this as he was used to it.

But this _spy_… well, he had a nasty habit of rocking that steady ship away from its seemingly predestined course.

"Ah!" The spy swiftly sat up in his seat and pointed ahead. Before then he had been quite still; the sudden movement nearly made the sniper choke on his own spit.

The Frenchman was pointing to a sign advertising RITA'S DINER, 2 MILE.

"We must stop there," he told the sniper. It was not a question, but a demand.

"Why?"

"Because I am hungry. I haven't eaten all day."

"It's probably a crap diner, though," the sniper told him truthfully as his stomach grumbled—he, too, hadn't eaten that day. He could go for a fat, juicy cheeseburger, with big, thick onion rings and Cole slaw on the side… he tried not to salivate—it was the exact sort of meal that would give him heartburn, first for all. And besides, he didn't want to stop at that diner and have to endure a _meal_ with the man. "Greasy diner food, not the sort you're accustomed to, I'm sure."

The spy drew in a deep breath and sighed. "_America_," he groaned, rubbing the temple of the right side of his head with his ring finger and pinkie.

The sniper chewed on the inside of his cheek. "I'm sure I got something lying around here—"

"_Hon hon_, no. If it is between the diner and whatever toxic bodily waste you have lying around here disguised as a meal, will risk the greasy food."

Rita's Diner was exactly what one would imagine it to be; a relatively empty boxcar diner in the middle of dusty old nowhere, smoky and dimly lit with a black and white TV in the corner playing _The Bride of Frankenstein_. The place smelled like fried onions and lonely drifters looking for a sense of belonging.

It was strange, clutching a laminated menu and sitting across from the masked man in blue. The sniper was accustomed to seeing him wielding his trademark butterfly knife, grinning gleefully as he hovered over an unsuspecting victim… not idly scanning the breakfast menu of a diner.

"Can I get you two gents a bite to eat?" The waitress had bobbed blonde hair and dramatic, cat-eye streaks of liner over each eye. Her hips were twice the size of her bust, but she wasn't fat. Just curvy.

"Ah, _oui_, mademoiselle" the spy drawled. He rested his elbow on the table and smiled softly at her with deep, heavy-lidded eyes. The sniper averted his eyes down to his menu. "For starters I would very much appreciate your finest black coffee with two sugars."

"Of course," she scribbled down the order on her plump pad of paper, but paused a moment. "Say, are you French?"

"I am whatever you want me to be, _mon cherie_." He ran his tongue smoothly over his bottom lip. "But my native land is, indeed, France."

Red apples bloomed on her cheeks and spent an uncomfortable amount of time smiling back at the spy.

The sniper cleared his throat.

The waitress blinked herself back into reality. "Oh, sorry," she said, turning to the sniper. "And you'd like…?"

"The same. Decaf and a bit more sugar, though." As he spoke, the sniper instinctively lifted his hand to his arm and rubbed the sore spot where the man sitting on the other side of the table had stabbed him. The handkerchief was still wrapped tautly around it.

"Be back with those in a tick. Take your time looking for your meals." She threw another quick, longing glance at the spy before turning and sashaying back behind the counter, to the kitchen.

"Mmm." The spy watched her back as she walked away. "That is _un beau cul_ if I ever saw one."

The sniper looked up from his menu at the spy, who was staring back at him with his gloved hands interlaced. "Sorry, I don't know what a—what that is—"

"_Cul_... I suppose the closest English translation I could give you is _ass_. She has a nice ass."

"Oh." The sniper tightened his jaw and glanced back at the kitchen, which was currently void of any nice asses. "Hm."

"_Hm_, indeed. Young, pretty, child-rearing hips… I suppose your mother would be quite pleased if you brought _her_ home, would she not, Lawrence?"

The sniper had almost forgotten that the spy had read the letter. He really had read _all_ of it, hadn't he?

The fact that the self-proclaimed lady killer was aware that the sniper's mother was begging him for a wife was, needless to say, a bit embarrassing.

"I dunno." He shrugged. He pushed his glasses up on top of his head and squinted at the menu. He was strongly considering the clam chowder, mainly because it was the only item he had actually been able to focus on for the entire time the spy was speaking.

"I can try to, you know_, set you up _with her, if you like."

The sniper furrowed his eyebrows and glanced up at the spy. The man was pulling out his trademark cigarette case—it almost disturbed the sniper, how often the Frenchman smoked. He wore a rather honest and lighthearted, albeit playful, expression on his face, and the sniper couldn't tell whether he was serious or just teasing him, as he so often took pleasure in doing.

Either way, he wasn't going to let him.

"I don't think so." Yes, it would probably be the clam chowder.

"You are a bachelor?" The spy broke into a grin.

"I guess you could say that, yeah." The sniper felt an emasculating flutter in his chest as he shifted uncomfortably, glancing over at the kitchen door in hopes the waitress would return with their coffee. "I just don't really think about that sort of thing."

"You lie through your teeth, bushman." The prediction was quick, low, and unsettlingly precise, but swiftly left to rot when the waitress came bustling back with two coffees. "Ah, _mademoiselle_! I was beginning to worry!"

"Sorry about the delay, boys," she sighed, setting the two cups down in front of each man. "Had a bit of a spill. Ready to order?"

"Clam chowder." Still dazed from the spy's moment of accusatory deduction, the words tumbled from his mouth before he even knew what he was saying. "Yeah. Clam chowder." He swallowed and handed her the menu. "I-I'd like a burger and onion rings, but it'd give me bloody awful indigestion."

"I will have it _for_ you, then," the spy said, as if he was about to perform a noble and charitable cause. "One cheeseburger, onion rings, and… _Cole slaw_." The order was for the waitress, but he grinned at the sniper.

"You won't like it," the sniper told him knowingly, shaking his head.

"Do not tell me what I will and will not like, Lawrence."


	8. The Repression

"You know, I could've paid," the sniper mentioned when they had gotten back into the van. "I got money."

The spy had cranked the window down and was letting the cool dusk breeze whip past his face as they drove along down the barren road, presumably attempting to air himself out and get rid of the fragrance of fried onions that currently clung to him like strong cologne. "Nonsense," he said in a clipped voice. He rested his hand lightly on his stomach and shifted in his seat, still staring out the window. "It was my idea to go there in the first place."

The sniper chewed on his lip, his stomach still full from his unexciting, yet relatively satisfying clam chowder.

"Besides," the spy added with an uneasy sigh. "I do not like people paying for me."

Yet, part of him had felt as though he had owed it to the spy—he wasn't sure why. Their meal together hadn't exactly been a delightful trip to the circus, but it had sort of… _humanized_ the masked man, and made the sniper see him in a way he didn't think was quite possible.

Not that he _liked_ him. He still found the spy to be frustratingly devilish.

He was certainly a talkative enough man, which was fine by the sniper, who never felt like he had much to say. The spy related his enormous, greasy hamburger to a man he met in Egypt who was capable of swallowing a live snake whole. From there he recounted his sexual encounter with three contortionists in Amsterdam. The sniper couldn't quite recall how he had related the two events, but it made sense at the time.

He wondered if any of it was true. Either way, the spy was a terrific storyteller, even if he _was_ a sadistic asshole.

Regardless, the spy wasn't half as talkative as he had been back at the diner. He leaned his elbow on the car door with his head partially out the window. Something tugged hard at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes gazed out at the dusty wasteland with an especially acidic bitterness to them. The sniper figured it was probably just _ennui_.

"Lawrence," the spy spoke, suddenly, bolting up right in a rigid position and grabbing the sniper's arm. "You must stop the car."

"What—why—?" The sniper glanced at the spy—his exposed skin was tinged an almost inhuman greenish-grey.

The spy gasped out a string of foreign words. The sniper didn't speak a lick of French, but he wasn't an idiot. He let the van jerk to an instant halt.

The spy urgently fumbled with the door for a moment before kicking it open and stumbling into open air, which was slowly being tucked into a blanket of nightfall. He staggered a few feet away from the car, then keeled over and vomited.

The sniper sidled out of the van, feeling both a twinge of concern and a slight sense of _I-told-you-so_—he _knew_ the spy wouldn't be able to stomach that slimy diner shit.

"You alright?" he called over, knowing very well that the spy was obviously not alright but asking anyway, because that's what you do.

The man was spitting out the acidic remains out into the dry dirt. For a long while he just stood there, bent over, not doing anything. Just staying still as a statue with his eyes squeezed shut, like he was trying his damnedest to pretend he was somewhere else.

Eventually he drew in a long peal of breath, and straightened himself. He shakily removed his gloves by plucking out each finger at a time, and then shoved them into his pocket. He reached within his suit jacket and wriggled out a handkerchief, somewhat similar to the one he had wrapped around the sniper's arm earlier that day. He dabbed the cloth around his mouth and then crushed it in his hand, refusing to face the sniper.

He stood there, with his arms crossed, a little bit longer. The sniper scratched behind his ear, feeling lost. "You want something to drink?" he asked.

"_Oui. Merci_."

The sniper opened up the back of his van and dug out an unopened water bottle from his cooler. The spy had followed him like a deer hesitantly leaving its thicket, all the while wearing an expression that seemed to be a mixture of haughtiness and distress.

When the sniper handed him the bottle, he paused before twisting it open.

"I can drink it all?" he asked, knotting his eyebrows.

The sniper shrugged at the strange question. "Yeah, go ahead, I've got tons more." He sat down on the cliff of the van and cross his arms.

"_Merci_." The spy pressed the opening of the bottle to his lips and gulped it down thirstily, as if he had been stranded out in this desert for three days straight. A rivulet dripped down his chin and streaked his mask, which had been otherwise unharmed during his moment of violent illness.

When the bottle was drained, he held it and the balled-up handkerchief in one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other.

"I'm sorry," he said in a raw, gravelly voice. "I feel… quite ashamed of myself."

"Don't have to apologize. You got sick. It happens to the best of us."

"I suppose it does." He spoke the words but didn't seem to believe them.

"You wanna lie down? I can pull down my bed for you." The suspicious look the spy shot him made him feel obligated to add. "It's a Murphy bed. I always keep it folded up if I'm not using it. It's very clean."

The spy peeled off his suit jacket as the sniper pulled down the bed. Underneath it, he wore a nicely tailored, crisp white shirt—the only flaw the sniper noticed was the slightly damp armpits. After tossing his suit jacket aside like it was a dirty towel, he hastily loosened his silk tie with quivering hands, as if he was trying to yank a noose away from his neck. The shoes (well-polished Italian leather) and the socks (argyle) were removed and added to the jumble. Lastly, he shrugged his suspenders off of his shoulders and let them dangle lazily around his waist. Like a good spy, he wouldn't take his mask off for the world.

The Frenchman climbed into the bed and curled up like a thin, slinky cat.

"You have a good heart, Lawrence," he mumbled weakly just when the sniper was about the climb into the front seat. "I am glad we are friends."

The sniper held the key to the ignition inches away from its designated slot, but was too distracted by the spy's muffled words to start the car. The spy's form was visible in the rearview mirror; the sniper pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head and adjusted the mirror to get a better look at the man.

_I am glad we are friends._

But where they really friends? The sniper hadn't thought so; an afternoon of banter didn't quite count as friendship, did it?

Although, once you got past the insufferable snobbery and inability to ever be fully trusted, the spy wasn't _so_ bad. He was entertaining enough. Clever. A fantastic storyteller.

And the strangest part was that he actually seemed to like the sniper. In fact, that's probably what disturbed the sniper the most about this situation. Not the fact that he was a spy or that he was on BLU, but the fact that he seemed _genuinely interested_ in him. It… didn't quite make sense. It wasn't something the sniper was used to.

He rested his hand on his knee and continued to stare into the mirror. The spy's thin back expanded slightly with each intake of breath, and his shirt had sneakily untucked itself, revealing the pale, dimpled flesh of the small of his back. His bare feet flexed and nuzzled each other.

The sniper reached under his seat and groped around a bit before grasping a soft, dry ball of yarn. A few months ago his mother insisted on his "getting a hobby" and mailed him some of her yarn and knitting needles. His thick fingers were clumsy at first and the stitches would slip out and be lopsided and sloppy, but eventually he got the hang of it.

He liked knitting, because it was a mindless, repetitive motion. Good for when you don't want to think about unpleasant things.

His mind had begun to wander back to their conversation in the diner.

Yes… yes. He had been lying through his teeth. But he _had_ to lie. The spy couldn't possibly understand, because for all his cryptic antics, he was still far more normal than the sniper.

The needles clacked together and the tight yarn rubbed against the calloused skin of his forefinger. A hot, slow-moving claw was wriggling its way up his chest and squeezing its fist around his heart. The needles clacked together faster.

His… _problem_, for lack of a better word, wasn't something he'd been able to put a name to until he was older and started traveling. At first he'd thought he was just too shy to take interest in women, and maybe it was something he'd eventually grow out of… but he was thirty-five years old; far past the age of "growing out" of things.

So he just pushed it down to the bottom of his self and let it stew down there for a while, until it would get to a point where it was as if his very body was ripping at the seams, and the only way to settle everything back down was to—

His eyes drifted downward at the thought, where he saw the tiniest glimpse of a tattered magazine corner poking out from beneath the mattress. Right underneath the sleeping spy.

He swallowed a hard lump of horror and turned to look behind him; was there any way he could wriggle the magazine out from the mattress and quickly lock it in the glove compartment? Could he do it without waking the spy?

Or perhaps he could just leave it there and hope the man wouldn't notice it?

Eventually the wear of the day got the best of him, and he drifted off to sleep without making a decision.


	9. The Magazine

The first sensation the sniper felt when he woke up was the smell of hot suede. He snapped open his eyes to darkness and for a moment felt a twinge of panic and instinctually began to claw at his face, only to realize that his hat had fallen over his face while he was asleep. He pushed it up on top of his head with the heel of his hand and blinked in the bright light in the stupefied manner that accompanies just waking up.

He was slouched in the driver's seat, crumpled like a forgotten rag doll that hadn't been touched in years. His knitting was tangled over the course of his lap. The twisted yarn reminded him of the night before—the intelligence that was actually the BLU spy, the diner, the spy getting sick and sleeping in his bed.

The sniper groaned softly and cracked his neck.

_I am glad we are friends_.

The van was warm from baking in the hot desert. Judging from the sun's position in the sky the sniper gathered it was some time around eight o'clock in the morning…

"Ah, _piss_."

He was late for work.

So was the spy.

"Eh, mate?" He called out behind him. "I think we might be late."

He was greeted with silence—uncharacteristic of the spy. Perhaps he was still asleep.

Frowning, the sniper climbed into the back of the camper.

The Murphy bed was still down, but had been hastily made, albeit very messily—apparently the spy wasn't one who was used to making his own bed.

"I hope you're not trying to trick me or something, spy." Just as the words flew out of his mouth he slipped on something smooth and papery that had been haphazardly sprawled on the ground. His heart thumping wildly from the unexpected stumble, he clutched onto the small, cluttered shelf that was situated above the bed in an attempt to get some balance; he'd forgotten how cramped the space could be when the bed was pulled out.

He looked down to see what had caused him to lose his footing.

A sick feeling began to bubble in his empty stomach.

The spy must have found the magazine while he was making the bed.

The sniper slumped down on the edge of the bed and put his forehead in the palm of his hand.

Yes, he could see it all playing out so clearly; the spy was about to tuck the sheet into the sides of the bed when—_oh hon hon, what is this? A magazine? Shoved under the mattress?_ And like the curious, nosey bastard he was pulled it out and saw what it was, whereupon he probably tossed it on the ground in disgust while saying something in French, then stormed out, never to return.

And… oh _Christ_, the spy would tell the rest of his team. It was the perfect sort of blackmail, wasn't it? They'd send out a letter to Mann Co. and RED would fire him on the spot—they couldn't possibly have men like _him_ working for them. They'd tell his parents, giving them one more reason to be utterly disappointed in their oldest son. They'd disown him. The FBI would probably blacklist him. He wouldn't be able to get another job.

He'd be ruined.

All because of a bloody beefcake magazine he kept under his mattress.

He sat there, wringing his hands and trying to formulate some sort of plan of action. Should he just go to work anyway and pretend like nothing was wrong? He'd probably get chewed out something fierce for being so late, though. What if he just skipped? No, that might look suspicious, wouldn't it?

He'd just go. He'd go, say that his van broke down and took awhile to get fixed. If the spy said anything about the rag he'd just… well, it technically _was_ a fitness magazine, wasn't it? They sold them in pharmacies, there was technically nothing _wrong_ with owning one.

He just… wanted to work on his physique. That's all. Nothing wrong about that.

About an hour later he was hustling into the Respawn room, clutching a stitch in his side—it occurred to him that perhaps actually working on his physique might be a good idea, if only to avoid getting so easily winded.

"Took you long enough, Stretch." The engineer was pawing through bolts and wires in his locker. "Soldier's just about ready to wring your neck."

"Sorry. Had a—I—my van broke down on the way…" the sniper panted, leaning against the wall.

"Calm down, pardner, catch your breath. You want me to take a look at it later today?" The engineer extracted a large blueprint, rolled it up, and shoved it into the pocket of his utility belt.

The engineer's sincere amiability was somewhat comforting, and it did calm the sniper down a considerable amount. "Nah, it's—it's fine. I got it fixed."

"If you say so." The engineer rose to his unimpressive full height and started for the exit. "I suggest you get your butt down on the field, Stretch. We're losing two for one."

The sniper had decided against bringing his usual rifle and instead had grabbed his lighter, more compact bow. If he was sitting in one position for a long amount of time, the spy would no doubt sneak up on him at one point and, well, that was just something he didn't want to deal with.

He was running down the wooden ramp and trying to hastily yank an arrow out of the quiver something incredibly hard and heavy whacked him on the spine.

"Ach! Christ!" He dropped the bow and arrow and slapped his hand on his aching back. "Bloody hell!"

The RED soldier was standing over him, wielding a gardening hoe and a grimace. "Do you think war is a joke?"

"Wha—? No—I—" He tried to straighten himself up, his back still aching—between this and the knife wound on his arm, this was not a good week for the sniper's body.

"Do I look like a _clown_ to you, private?"

"No, no, you don't understand—"

"Do I have a big, red nose? Do I _have rainbow hair_? Do I lure innocent babies into my hellish circus tent of doom and devour them _whole_? DO I, MAGGOT?" The belligerent Midwesterner began to close in on the sniper.

"No—er—not that I _know_ of—"

"THEN TELL ME WHY YOU ARE MAKING A MOCKERY OF THIS BATTLE, PRIVATE!" He spat the words into the sniper's collar bone, puffing himself out like a small bird trying to intimidate a crane.

"I'm not!" the sniper snapped, his frustration rising up his throat in a thick lump. "My bloody van broke down, I couldn't—"

"THAT IS ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE," the soldier bellowed, smacking his gardening tool against the wall in an attempt to solidify his words. "YOU COULD HAVE _WALKED_."

"Oh, piss off you bloody deranged _lunatic_!" In a mount of intense, heightened aggravation, he shoved the loud-mouthed bastard away from him with a surprising amount of force. The soldier stumbled back, his helmet shifting to reveal a pair of bugged out eyes that were wrought with shock. "I am _not_ in the mood to put up with your insane bullshit!" the sniper snarled, shoving his grubby finger in the soldier's face "If you say one more fucking word about my being late, so help me God I will _shove that bloody hoe_ down your throat."

With that, he swiped the bow and arrow up from the ground and stalked off in the opposite direction, grumbling a variety of colorful words under his breath.

"Lordy." The engineer wandered over to the soldier's side, watching as the sniper blundered off. "Never seen the boy so angry about anything before. Wonder what's got his shorts in a bunch."

The soldier didn't say anything. He was still standing like a deer in headlights, staring out in a daze. The engineer frowned, and then waved his hand in front of his fellow American's face. The man didn't even blink.

The Texan shrugged and walked off. He supposed that, like sentries, people sometimes short-circuited too.


	10. The Promise

Out of all the people he could disguise as, the scout was probably the spy's favorite. In truth, he hated the little chattering fucker, even if the boy's mother was rather entrancing. But he liked disguising as him because it allowed him to move faster than normal.

He was aimlessly scampering around in the RED base. He didn't have much of a job to do; every so often he'd run over to the sentries and sap them, but the engineer was quick enough to knock the device off before it caused any damage.

He was especially vigilant that day, keeping an eye out for tall men with sunglasses and big guns, and making the utmost effort to avoid them.

Thinking about the night before made him cringe; the way he'd gotten sick, acted like a child, slept in the man's bed. Upon waking up the next morning, he had felt so disgusted with himself that he couldn't bear the face the sniper. He just left—something he often did when faced with adversity.

The concept of someone seeing him that way, seeing him _vulnerable_, filled him with chilling humiliation.

He flew back to the sentries, in another attempt to sap them.

"Yo, Tex, what's up?" he said in his best rendition of the kid's Bostonian accent. He leaned his hand against the shivering metal sentry, slipping his other hand in his shoulder bag and reaching for the sapper.

The engineer smirked at the disguised spy and raised his eyebrows over his smokey-lensed goggles. "You're especially fidgety today, boy. Why don't you skip along and bother someone else, hm? Or better yet, try to actually get something done?"

He shifted and placed both hands on the sentry, slipping the sapper down and attaching it to the bundle of wires that kept it going. "I _have_ been working!" he protested. "I just gotta keep coming back to your dispenser, that freakin' BLU heavy's been poundin' my ass in. Fat son of a bitch. Jeez."

"Hm." The engineer bent down to fiddle with a broken tray at the bottom of the dispenser. "Oh," he glanced up just as the spy began to discretely punch in the countdown time for the sapper. "By the way, boy, I suggest you keep out of the sniper's way today."

The spy paused and pinched his lips together. "Oh? Why's that?"

"He's in a rotten mood. Haven't got a clue why, but he damn near bit the soldier's head off earlier today. Might have something to do with the fact that his van broke down."

"Did it?" The spy's hand drifted to his chin, which he began to stroke thoughtfully.

"He said that's why he was late." The engineer shrugged.

The spy pressed his thumb against the red, circular button in the middle of the sapper. "Well, I gotta go, Tex. See ya later, alligator."

The Texan grinned. "In a while, crocodile."

The spy hurried off and skidded around the corner, towards the basement, which was usually void of any meddling classes. Just as he began to flurry down the stairs he heard the buzzing and crackling of a short-circuiting sentry.

"_DANG SPY!_"

The spy morphed out of his disguise and chuckled quietly under his breath. Sometimes he just needed to fuck around with an engineer to lighten his mood.

Still giggling, he withdrew his cigarette case and placed a smoke between his lips. He went to continue on downward, but something tugged at the bottom of his suit. He rolled his eyes, knowing quite well that if it had snagged on the hand rail like it had last week he may as well give up trying to look nice.

The tail of his jacket was pinned against the wall, having been pierced by an arrow. Immediately he grabbed it and began to hopelessly tug, trying desperately not to rip his suit any further. For some strange reason, cloaking hadn't even occurred to him.

"Can't run off _now_, can you?" The RED sniper emerged from the shadow corner across the hall, pulling another arrow out of the quiver.

"Oh, _merde_," the spy sighed and pinched his cigarette between his fingers as the sniper advanced on to him.

"Who did you tell?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper, grabbing the spy's jaw and squeezing his cheeks.

"_Eshhkooshz me_," the spy sputtered past the sniper's muffling grip. "_I cannurt schpeak unlessh you lurt gur of mur furss_."

The sniper hesitated, and then released his hand. The spy flexed his mouth like he was chewing a large wad of gum and rubbed his cheeks. "_Merci_. Please repeat your question?"

"_Who did you tell_?" the sniper repeated urgently. The thick eyebrows above his sunglasses knotted together worriedly.

"Tell _what_, may I ask?" The spy crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

The sniper gaped at him a moment, ignoring the muffled gunfire blazing above and outside. "The—about the—about the a magazine you found under my bed—"

The spy frowned and his eyes wandered towards the ceiling, as if he was trying to recall a long forgotten memory. When he realized what the sniper was talking about he let out a short snicker. "Oh, the _pornography_?" He grinned toothily. "Is that what you mean?"

"Yeah." The sniper crossed his arms and dropped his eyes to the ground. "That." He swallowed and scuffed his boot against the ground. "I thought that's why you ran off."

"_Mon dieu_, Lawrence, you thought I left because you are a _homosexual_?" He withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and cackled even harder. Smoke billowed from his lungs and danced in the air above them. The fact that he would even venture such a thought was endearingly naïve. The spy had met so many perverts along his travels that a plain old queer was practically a _relief_.

The word he used made the sniper visibly unsettled. "Don't—don't say that," he grumbled.

"But you _are_ a homosexual, are you not?" A smile curled at the corner of the spy's lips as he surveyed the sniper with a look that seemed to know every single thing running through the sniper's head as they spoke. It was entirely possible that he did; as a spy his job was to know what everything a person is thinking. "There is only one reason a man would own a magazine like _that_, Lawrence."

The sniper's ears turned a violent shade of red. The spy continued to grin.

"I mean, well, it's—" The sniper protested lamely. "It's really just a _fitness_ magazine, it's not anything—"

"Leave the lying to me, _mon ami_. You are terrible at it."

The sniper gulped and pushed his sunglasses up his nose. He shoved his fists in the pockets of his vest and looked down at the ground, his mouth contorted into a frown. "I don't really look the type, do I?" he laughed weakly, although he didn't seem to actually be very amused. He swiped the heel of his hand under his nose.

"They rarely do." The spy sucked in a drag. "Am I the only person who knows this?"

The sniper nodded, still frowning at the ground.

"And so it shall remain."

The sniper looked up.

"I am many things, _mon ami_, but a gossip is not one of them." He flicked the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his shoe. "I will carry your secret to the grave."


	11. The Doctor

"As it so happens," the spy continued, straightening his jacket as best he could while it was still stuck to the wall. "I—" His words were cut off by a quick gasp; he disappeared in a puff of smoke with a brisk _fwoop_.

"Mundy?"

People _really_ needed to stop referring to the sniper by his given name. Wasn't this supposed to be a _professional_ environment? Of course, there was only one person on his team who knew his last name besides him.

He sighed heavily and scratched the back of his neck with dirty fingernails, turning to face the medic.

The German man was looking up at him, squinting past his small round spectacles and clutching his medigun in an especially proud and pretentious manner, as if he was posing for a Napoleonic portrait.

The doctor was a strange bloke; not the kind of strange that he just brushed off as relatively harmless, like the way the demoman got blaringly drunk and popped grenades off the roof on Sunday nights, or understatedly strange, like the way the engineer had cut off his own hand a replaced it with a robotic one. It was the kind of strange that honestly made him feel uneasy. It was bad enough he was a doctor, but his shined boots and crisp pants, the way he straightened himself in an almost militaristic way and said "_Javoul_," the way he licked the blood off of his fingers when he thought no one was looking…

The sniper recalled one day when the scout had finally asked the medic what everyone was wondering. At first he was solemn and quiet, letting the question sink in and get absorbed into his body. Then, when he seemed to have considered the words for a sufficient amount of time, he threw his head back and hooted in that uncomfortably high-pitched, hysterical way he does. "Nazi!" he had said, removing his glasses and wiping tears from under his eyes. "_Nazi!_" He laughed like that for a good few minutes before calming down to a few giggles and a few breathless w_hoo-hoo-hoos_, before frowning, straightening his tie, and saying, "The Nazis were amateurs."

The same man started up the stairs towards the sniper. "You were conversing with the wall, _mein Teamkollege_. That is not healthy."

"Yeah, about that…" The sniper glanced back to where the other man had been; all that was left of the spy was a strip of blue fabric still tacked to the wall.

"Herr Mundy." The medic started up the steps in a slow, deliberate manner. "I am… for lack of a better word, concerned about your psychological condition. You seem distressed."

The sniper glanced over his shoulder. In truth, he didn't feel very comfortable being alone with the doctor (although he couldn't quite help being but slightly amused by the fact the medic was concerned about _the sniper's_ psychological well-being). "I think we should get back to the battle, doc."

"Ah, yes." The medic paused and raised his eyebrows, listening to the melodic lullaby of gunfire. His eyes drifted off for a moment "I forget, sometimes…" He looked back up at the sniper. "But you will meet up with me after, and I will give you a check-up, _ja_?"

"Erm—"

"_Gut_. I will see you then."

There wasn't much left to debate. The medic wasn't someone who was stubborn so much as he was one who just expected things to be a certain way.

It felt like the day had ended early, but the sniper kept forgetting the fact that he had come several hours late. He didn't see the spy the rest of the day, but he was able to proudly boast pinning the BLU heavy to the wall four times.

It was the little things that could make a day better.

They hadn't been able to capture the designated points, which warranted another length, unnecessary, redundant, and slightly unsettling rage speech from the soldier. The sniper did, however, observe that it wasn't as absurdly long as his other ones and involved a lot less mocking of Australia. He could only imagine why.

He'd tried to slip out of the entrance of the RED base quickly and hope the doctor had forgotten his insistence on the check-up, but just as he was starting for the door with he pack slung over his shoulder, he heard the medic's fluctuating German call out, "Herr Mundy!"

The sniper wrinkled his nose and turned cautiously.

The medic was standing in the doorway of the offices, twisting a damp rag over his bare hands. His bloodied white coat had been cast aside somewhere, and a stethoscope dangling around his neck.

"Prepare for your examination." A slight smile painted his lips and he briskly led the sniper to his medical room.

It didn't exactly look like a typical doctor's office. It had thick red curtains, a matching rug, and the kind of furniture the sniper would expect to see the personal office of a politician rather than the work office of a doctor. The hard rubber table meant to be blessed with the butts of patients seemed strangely out of place and almost anachronistic in the doctor's keep.

The medic kept a neat room, which the sniper begrudgingly admired, although it was encumbered with a variety of curiosities. The largest of which, a twisted, misshapen being that appeared to be some sort of mockery of a human skeleton, caught his attention. "_What_ is that?" he asked, gesturing to the grotesque arrangement of bones.

"Ah!" The medic strode over to the skeleton and placed his hand on the side of its cranium, which was bubbled and mottled like melted plastic. "This is _mein Liebling_, Joseph. He is an exact copy of the Elephant Man's remains. You have heard of the Elephant Man, _ja_?"

"Yeah, but… honestly, I thought he'd look a bit more like an elephant."

"Mm. _Ja_. That's what they all say." The medic pushed his glasses up his nose with his forefinger. "But anyway," he said, snapping himself out of the momentary thought and starting for his desk, a large mahogany piece of furniture situated in the middle of his office. "On with the examination." He ripped open one of the drawers and began to paw through files. "If you would so kindly strip down to your underwear."

The sniper hesitated, and then shrugged off his vest as the medic removed his file.

"I'd weight you, but it appears my scale has gone missing." The frown lines around his mouth deepened. "I believe the scout has stolen it again to use as a home plate for his childish ball games." He sighed and rolled his eyes. "But I digress. My plan is to do an assessment of your _mental_ health, Herr Mundy, but I feel it necessary to give you the routine check-over, seeing as it appears you have not visited a man of medicine in…" The medic licked his finger and flipped through the pages as the sniper yanked off his boots. "Seven years?" He pressed his lips together and gave the sniper a disapproving glare.

"Been busy." The sniper fumbled with popping open the buttons of his red shirt.

"Not many practitioners in the bush, I suppose?" He pulled on his rubber gloves, giving them a snap for good measure when he let go.

"Not really. Kind of had to make do." It was true—there had been days where he wouldn't see another person for days on end, let alone a doctor. He'd grown quite used to just taking care of himself in the event of danger. Besides, there was something kind of rewarding about being able to fend for yourself. Slicing off an infected pinkie toe had seemed absolutely horrifying and utterly nauseating when he'd had to do it after it had been bitten by a tiny, yet disturbingly poisonous spider, but in retrospect it was actually pretty cool. He supposed.

He sidled himself on the table and kicked off the trousers that had bunched around his ankles, and then folded them with the rest of the clothes. He removed his socks, too, mainly because wearing just socks and underwear felt strange. The pinkie-toe-less nub at the end of his right foot would have winked at him if it had eyes.

The medic walked around the desk over to him and stuck the stethoscope in his ears. "The glasses, too, _bitte_."

The sniper slipped off his sunglasses and placed them with the rest of his clothes.

The medic approached him, looked down, and grinned. "You have little kittens on your underwear, Herr Mundy."

"They're not kittens. They're koalas."

His smile faded. "Hm." The sniper supposed that the medic was not a koala person. "Speaking of making do…" The doctor's eyes rested on the handkerchief, still tied around his arm, stiff with dried blood. He undid the knot and unraveled the light fabric, the brown blot of blood becoming thicker with each removal of an outer layer. The wound was a mottled dark red, still raw but just starting to scab over. "You do not trust me to heal you?" he asked, his voice heavy with disdain.

"No, I just—I didn't want to bother you," the sniper said as the medic held the cloth up to the light to observe it. "Had the handkerchief on me, thought I could just—"

The doctor swiftly produced a tongue depressor out of nowhere and tossed the handkerchief aside. Its sudden appearance was almost frightening.

"Say 'ah'." The sniper barely had a chance to open his mouth before the medic shoved the stick inside. He grabbed the man's wrist and jerked it away, gagging. "Slow down, will you?" he demanded, rubbing his throat. "_Crikey_."

The medic carried on with poking various instruments in all the orifices above the sniper's neck, saying nothing but the occasional, "Hm."

He proceeded to press the stethoscope against seemingly random points on the sniper's chest and back, instructing him to breathe deeper than he felt was possible.

"You have a fast heartbeat," he observed. "Nothing to be concerned about. Just faster than usual. You are nervous, Herr Mundy?"

"No," the sniper lied. "It's just been a long day."

With that, the medic stepped back like an artist examining his work. He removed the stethoscope from his ears. "You seem to be in, eh, _decent_ physical shape despite living such a sedentary lifestyle, although I would like to do some bloodwork. We shall schedule that for another day, though. In the mean time—on with your _brain_."


	12. The Forest

The man groaned and yanked at his collar. He really did need to lose weight—sweat was building up around his neck from the tight hold of his formalwear. Granted, this wasn't a normal night by any means.

He could feel the weight of the small package, wrapped in brown paper, pressing against his heart.

He tried to calm himself by reaching to the radio and fiddling with the dial. Neon lights fizzed through the air and glittered in the reflection of his car window shield. Horns flew in and out of his hearing range with swiftness, screaming to be heard but passing by before they could be truly absorbed.

It would be simple enough; drive to the RED, base, drop the package off at the RED base, drive home, wait for his paycheck, then live the rest of his life happily ever after. Maybe he and the family could finally take that trip to Italy like they'd been talking about all these years.

It probably would've been a nice trip, if he'd made it to the base.

Unfortunately for the man, he was stalled at a most inopportune time; in front of a railroad, waiting for a passing train to slice through the chilled night air. The moment the train began to hustle by, something slapped itself over his eyes. He barely had time to realize it was a hand, to smell the faint scent of cologne, to hear the words "_Dormez bien_" tickling his ear—the masked assailant sliced his throat open faster than the brain had time to comprehend the situation.

Blood spilled down his chest. The man slumped against the steering wheel, the useless hunk of meat that was once his head falling flat on the horn. The long, wailing beep rang out after the departing train.

The spy sighed, holding his arms out to the light of the moon and observing the speckled dots of red on the sleeve of his suit jacket. "You got _blood_ on my suit," he groaned, flaring his nostrils in annoyance.

He gingerly snaked his hand into the dead man's dinner jacket and pawed around until he found what he was looking for—a small package, roughly the size of a ring box, wrapped in brown paper and twine. He held it for a moment, twisting it and observing it. In truth, he didn't quite care what was in the box. He just liked the way it was wrapped. It brought back a comforting memory, of being little and seeing that one, single present sitting at the foot of his bed, wrapped in brown paper and twine. Every Christmas, even the tough ones.

_Maman_.

Pushing the memories down into the bottom of his gut, he tucked the parcel safe within one of the many hidden pockets in his suit, and proceeded to clean up the scene of the crime.

First off, bloody knives were one of his pet peeves. Obviously there was no way to avoid that, but the way some people never bother to clean their weapons was just so _barbaric_. The spy removed a handkerchief from his pocket (he had many handkerchiefs) and swiped the blade until he could see himself grinning in it.

As for the body, well, that would be difficult. The spy was used to bloody bodies, but hefty ones… well, not so much.

The first thing to do was spray the body down. It was a small blue sprits bottle from Mann Co. that he had been issued, specifically for the purpose of covering the stench of rotting bodies. It lasted up to three months, according to the label on the back.

He didn't ask question.

The stuff had a musky, almost cotton-ball sort of scent to it upon first being sprayed, but the smell quickly evaporated into nothing. The spy made a mental note to apply more cologne, though, just in case.

He removed the extra cloaking watch he had wrapped around his wrist and attached it to the dead man. His immediate disappearance almost made the job feel halfway done.

The spy proceeded to cloak himself as well, and then breathlessly struggle to drag the body out of the car and towards the wooded area that extended off of the road. Past a hilly mound, the woods fell off into a steep cliff. The spy grinned and wiped beaded sweat from his forehead. Perfect.

He couldn't see the body as it tumbled down the hill, but he could hear it.

It wouldn't be found. The cloaking device would keep the body invisible, and the spray would keep animals and nosey passerby away—by the time both wore off he'd be bones, buried underneath a layer of damp, fallen leaves.

The spy, still standing by the edge of the forest, dabbed a bit of cologne on his wrists, then tore off his mask and stuffed it within his suit, simultaneously withdrawing his cigarette case.

There was something hypnotically peaceful about dark forests. Maybe it was because the spy was raised in a bustling city. Maybe it was the fact that he was inexplicably drawn to things like forests in the night; dark and quiet but full of stories—stories that may never be told.

The spy returned to the car, jingling the keys he had pilfered from the body. He settled comfortably into the driver's seat as if he was the rightful owner, easing the key into the ignition and stroking the gas with his foot.

He started along down the road, continuing what the other man had begun.

The spy switched the radio station, searching for something bearable. Not many people listened to Charles Trénet or Edith Piaf these days. Understandable. But they could at least compensate by not airing shit on the radios and insisting it was _music_.

"_Well my pad is very messy__  
><em>_And there's whiskers on my chin__  
><em>_And I'm all hung up on music__  
><em>_And I always play to win__  
><em>_I ain't got no time for lovin'__  
><em>_Cause my time is all used up__  
><em>_Just to sit around creatin'__  
><em>_All that groovy kind of stuff"_

He paused. There was something terribly familiar about the song. Something both exciting, yet slightly unsettling. He couldn't quite put his finger on why…

"_I'm a man__  
><em>_Yes I am__  
><em>_and I can't help__  
><em>_but love you so."_

Oh. That's right.

The spy blew smoke through his nose.

_Lawrence_.

Against his better judgment, he let the song continue.

The more the spy learned about the sniper, the more intrigued by him he was. And he could even almost feel as though he could relate to the Australian, as strange as it seemed. They were drifters, solitude killers, and sort of set aside from the rest of the team. There was always that distance—the spy liked to think it was because he was too refined for his colleagues, but it was possible that he went out of his way to avoid getting close to them.

The spy was certainly social, but he didn't get close to people. It wasn't good, getting close to people.

The package in his jacket felt heavy against his chest.

No, trusting people, loving people, putting faith in people… it was a foolish thing to do. It resulted in disappointment and pain.

The spy didn't even quite care about the fact that they were meant to be enemies—he never saw things black and white the way people like the soldier did. There are no 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The spy himself was neither good nor bad. He had done some good things and some bad things. But he didn't label himself to a certain side. He really just tried to focus on what was best for him. An egocentric point of view, he could admit that. But at least he was aware of it.

No, it wasn't a problem of loyalty. It was a problem of closeness.

The car, which he had come to realize was a relatively new Lincoln with a delightfully smooth ride, hit a rock in the middle of the road. It jolted along with the spy's stomach.

Remembering the day before was still humiliating.

He'd _already_ allowed himself to vulnerable, to expose his raw underbelly and humble himself to the concept of familiarity. It felt almost nauseatingly shameful in retrospect, but at the time it had felt comforting and relieving.

The song ended and the spy drove on.

He didn't quite know where he was going.


	13. The Sky

The sniper wasn't quite sure what had happened. All he knew was that one moment he was lying down with the doctor slowly counting backwards, and the next he was standing in front of the replicated Elephant Man's skeleton, holding it tenderly as if they were about to waltz.

He stared at the misshapen skull of a moment as it waited expectantly for him to twirl it like a blushing bride. Gingerly, he shrugged the boney arms off of him and turned to find the medic sitting cross-legged in his desk chair, adamantly taking notes. When he realized the sniper was staring at him he frowned.

"I suppose the hypnosis stopped working, then," he sighed. He picked up his glasses, which had been resting, folded, on top of a pile of books, and slipped them on his face. "I must admit, that's a bit frustrating. I would have thought it would last longer. Of course, I've never hypnotized anyone before. You are my, how do you say… _guinea pig_?" The medic grinned toothily—there was something unsettling about his smile. It seemed as if he had more teeth than the average human being. Sharks had three rows of teeth. Perhaps the medic was half-shark?

_That would make a lot of sense_, the sniper thought to himself.

The medic continued, skimming over his notes. "I _would_ like to experiment with some electroshock therapy." Failing to notice the sniper's jaw drop to the floor, he glanced down at his watch. "Ah, _Scheiße_! If I stay any later my wife will lock me out of the house again. As much as I would love to try electrocuting you, Herr Mundy, I have no desire breaking into my own home again for the fourth time this week." He chuckled deeply in the back of his throat. "We can try that another time, hm?"

"Erm." The sniper wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of any more experimentation from the medic. The doctor had made it quite clear that he had very little training in psychology; his knowledge being based mostly off of skimming Freud's published works. After the sniper had gotten dressed, the doctor spent an uncomfortably long time questioning him about his dreams, trying to explain the latent content but just continually leading back to the insistence that the sniper had an oedipal complex. "Hey doc?"

The doctor looked up from his desk with raised eyebrows.

"Why exactly did you _want_ to do all this, anyway?" Normally the sniper wouldn't question the medic's motives, but he couldn't help but find it strange that the man would so suddenly take such an intense interest in his mental health. Typically the medic spent his time trotting along behind the heavy, or pestering the pyro about agreeing to a full body scan, or just locking himself in his office and doing god knows what. The demoman mentioned sometimes that he could hear the doctor laughing along behind the closed door, but the demoman also claimed to have made love with a giant sea serpent, so the sniper learned to take what he said with a grain of salt. "I mean, did someone say something to you, or…?"

"Ah." The medic sighed, sending the sniper a tired glance as he went to the coat rack for his jacket. "You've caught on. I was hoping we could make this casual." He shrugged the jacket on over his waistcoat. "It was the engineer who insisted I examine you. He was concerned about you today."

"Oh, that?" The fact the engineer had worried about him was somewhat touching, but a little bothersome. "Nah, I was just pissed because my van broke down this morning, it wasn't anything—"

"So I was told. Well, he felt that you needed attention. Like a good doctor, I complied. I am just doing my job, Herr Mundy." He reached for the light switch and withdrew his keys from his pocket. "Walk with me to my car, _ja_?"

The sniper stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed the medic out of the building. The sniper usually left as soon as he could, so locking up and turning off the lights was strange to him. He could imagine it was routine for the medic, who always seemed to be the last person to leave for the day.

The medic had a nice car, a dark green 1966 Porsche 911. It seemed like doctors always had nice cars.

The night had started to begin earlier and earlier as the days carried on, and with it the air came colder and colder. The sniper tensed his shoulders as he and the medic crossed the parking lot.

He felt like he was supposed to say something.

"So, you've got a wife?"

"_Ja_." The vaguest wisp of white breath curled from his nose. "Although, at times it seems more like _she_ is the one who has got _me_." He laughed at his own joke.

"Got any kids?" The sniper didn't mean to prod, but there was part of him that was curious about the medic's life outside of work. He often had troubling imaging his teammates being normal people, having lives and families and interests besides ruthless slaughter.

"My wife is barren," the medic told him coldly.

"Oh." The sniper looked down at his feet. "I'm sorry. That's awful."

"Awful?" The medic snorted. "I cannot express how _relieved_ I was when I learned she was sterile. I never wanted children. They are horrible creatures."

"Oh, well—they're not so bad, kids. I've got a niece. She's sweet." He hadn't seen Sheila in a long time, now that he thought about it. Not since last Christmas. That whole day had been a terribly awkward ordeal, especially when his father threw the figgy pudding at him.

"You are not married, Herr Mundy?"

The sniper felt his ears grow warm. "No. I'm a bachelor."

"Good." The medic nodded. They approached his car. "I suggest you keep it that way."

With a curt "Good night", the medic drove off until his car was a puttering speck down the endless stretch of empty road. The sniper wondered if he'd make it in time before his wife locked him out of the house.

Hypnosis, electroshock therapy… that's the kind of stuff they did to crazy people. People who ranted and screamed and drooled in asylums, all locked up in straight jackets.

Whenever the sniper thought of insanity, he thought of that guy from _Dracula_, the one who eats flies and has huge, bugged out eyes and grins in this way that makes you feel almost sick. The fact that people could get crazy like that was so… _creepy_.

_Those_ were the types that needed headshrinkers, weren't they? The sniper certainly wasn't a babbling lunatic. He was pretty normal, far as normal went.

But then again, he killed people for a living. And he collected his piss in jars. And he was, as the spy had so bluntly put it, a homosexual.

Perhaps he was insane.

He climbed into his truck and patted his vest for a pack of cigarettes. The van shivered to a start, its bright yellow headlights simmering two round moons on the otherwise blackened earth.

He lit a strike-anywhere match on his thumb.

Of course. Only a mad man would become friends with an enemy.

He frowned.

He and that spy weren't really friends, though. Friendship didn't work like that. Of course, the sniper never was a particularly social person, even when he was a kid. He had acquaintances, sure, but never those sorts of friends that last for years and write you letters and listen to your problems and shit. So perhaps the problem was that he wasn't quite sure how this sort of thing _worked_.

_I am glad we are friends_.

The sniper blew wisps of smoke into the air, cranking down his window and letting a cool breeze drift into the van. He thought back to the spy curled up on his bed, and had a sudden desire to see him there again, to lie down next to him, to—

The sniper groaned, swallowing himself down into his gut. He switched the radio on for the purpose of distraction.

"_I'm a man__  
><em>_Yes I am__  
><em>_and I can't help__  
><em>_but love you so."_

His cigarette between his forefinger and middle finger, he clutched the steering wheel somberly, his foot hovering over the pedal. Hot air danced out from underneath the van as it stayed situated in that one spot, waiting for the sniper to ease it into motion. But he didn't.

Oh, God.

He slumped back into his seat and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He was just tired. It was a long day, and he was tired, and confused, and worn out from the battle and the medic and… and maybe, when the medic hypnotized him, he'd messed around with his head. Did something funny to it.

He wasn't thinking straight.

"_I'm a man__  
><em>_Yes I am__  
><em>_and I can't help__  
><em>_but love you so."_

The sniper turned off the car and sat for a moment, listening to the crickets. Then he climbed out of the van.

The sniper had been to big cities and he'd never liked them. When asked when he was never quite able to give a proper answer, because it seemed like there were so many reasons, but the biggest one was the nighttime. In the bush, he'd gotten used to still nights. There was something inexplicably peaceful about lying down and staring up. In big cities, you can't see the stars. Too many lights and sounds and people; they block all the beauty of the world and smother it like a blanket soaked in thorns.

But when you're all alone, and it's just you and the sky, life slows down. Things feel better for awhile. You can breathe.

The sniper climbed up the ladder, to the top of his van, and for the first time in a long time, sat down and stared at the stars.


	14. The Kiss

The sniper pulled the arrow back, one eye squeezed shut, his aim pointed towards the entrance of the BLU base. Enemies were pouring out left and right, but they were especially swift. Or maybe he was just having a slow day. Either way, he was having a considerable amount of difficulty getting any kills.

If only the BLU heavy would stay still—wait—_yes_—he _almost_ had him—

"Stretch?"

The arrow pierced the heavy's hat. The gigantic Russian looked up at the new addition to his headwear, emitted a belly-booming laugh from the bottom of his gut, and then continued to decimate his RED enemies.

The sniper sighed, lowered his bow, and turned to see the engineer grinning at him; his eyebrows raised high above his smokey-lensed goggles. In his arms he held a large toolbox.

"Mind givin' me a hand, pardner?" He grunted and shifted the weight of the toolbox. "I want to set up a sentry farther down the way so we can take 'em by surprise when the cart turns the corner. It'll only take a second."

"Ah…" The sniper glanced at the swarming BLUs as they danced around the cart, knowing full well that he'd be needed to take them out and prevent them from moving any further.

Then again, the engineer had always been a good guy. And even though the check-up with the medic was… relatively unnecessary, he couldn't ignore the fact that he had only asked because he was concerned. Helping him for a bit was the least he could do.

The engineer trotted before him in his typical bowlegged fashion. Dust curled underneath each footfall. The sniper hustled after him as he pulled another bow from his quiver.

The sniper knew this was an opportune time to mention the check-up, but he wasn't quite sure what to say about it. That the check-up went well, thank you very much? That would be a bald-headed lie, though. That the engineer should piss off and mind his own business? No, that was too nasty. That he appreciated the concern but he really didn't need any head-shrinking? But… what if he _did_ need head-shrinking?

The engineer didn't say a word about any of it, and the sniper was beginning to believe the medic may have lied to him.

They turned the corner and the engineer led him up a winding wooden staircase, to a cramped, windowless loft. The sniper frowned as the engineer dropped the toolbox with a knee-quaking _thud_.

"You think this is a good place to build a sentry, Truckie?"

"Of course not," he said in a telling French accent as he removed a cigarette case from the pocket of his overalls. "Especially seeing as I have no idea how to build one."

The sniper resisted the urge to slap himself on the forehead as the BLU spy morphed back into his usual appearance.

"My apologies for the long expedition, bushman," he said matter-of-factly, lighting his cigarette. "I wanted to be sure we could speak in private."

"About what?" The sniper's Adam's apple bobbed.

The spy sighed heavily, his gaze drifting to the floor for a moment, before glancing back up at the sniper. "We cannot continue this. This… this _game_ of teasing and flirting… like _schoolchildren_. We have jobs to fulfill."

"I don't know—"

"You know _exactly_ what I mean, Lawrence," the spy snapped icily, curling his nose and baring his teeth in an almost animalistic manner. "You are a not an idiot and you must stop pretending that you are one." The words were as sharp as his balisong, which had been slipped out of his jacket and was now open in his hand. "We cannot continue to ignore the fact that we are on separate teams. We are meant to be enemies." He began to stalk towards the sniper like a cat hunting a bird. "Lawrence, I'm afraid that I must kill you. _Desolee_."

He pounced.

The sniper was accustomed to quick reflexes, but had he been anyone else he may have just stood there and let the spy plunge the knife into his stomach.

He knocked the spy away with a swift elbow—the knife that had been aimed for his throat grazed his cheek, and a river of blood ran down to his jaw.

"What the bloody _hell_ are you doing?" he yelled, raising his hand to his cheek and touching the gash.

The spy clung against the creaky wall of the loft, his gloved hand wrapped around the blood stained knife. He stared at the sniper with an almost pitiful expression, his mouth twisted into an open frown.

"Since when do you give a rat's ass about team loyalty?" the sniper asked, looking down at the blood on his hand. "I mean, _you_ of all people?"

The spy lowered his gaze to the ground, and let the balisong slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor. He slumped against the wall and slid down, streaks of dust staining his otherwise flawless suit jacket. He held his fingertips tightly to his temples, as if trying to contain a horrible demon that would be released if he took his hands away.

"Killing you is more difficult that I was hoping it would be," he mumbled.

"You're not trying very hard." The sniper wiped his bloody cheek with his sleeve. "Sitting on the floor won't stop my heart beating, that's for sure."

"I don't want to kill you."

"So don't."

"It's not that simple, Lawrence." The spy sighed, glancing up at the sniper. Noticeable half-moons of gray streaked underneath his eyes, and his skin hung loose and haggard underneath the balaclava. It was the look of someone who hadn't slept. "By becoming close to you I have started down a road that splits in two. The easiest path is to pretend we never spoke and continue on with our ruthless bloodshed."

"What's the hard path?" the sniper asked, already knowing the answer in the pit of his stomach.

The spy dropped his hands from his head and let them fall onto his lap. He was quiet for a moment. He seemed to be holding an extensive, heated debate within his mind. His face stark, he stared intently at the ground. Every so often he would swallow and his jaw would shift—the sniper noticed that the spy hadn't shaved that morning.

"Lawrence," he said after a moment. "Please answer me this question honestly."

"Alright," the sniper said in a cautious tone. His hands were stuffed in his pockets.

"Do you find me attractive?" He continued to gaze at the floor even after the question had been asked.

The sniper felt his ears grow hot. Warmth rose up his neck and he sucked in a deep breath of air. "I—erm—well, I—"

The spy snorted softly, a grinning pulling on his lips. "So easily flustered. Funny, how such a deadly man can get as bashful as a schoolgirl when faced with romance. It's charming, really, in a quaint sort of way." He pulled himself up off the floor and idly swept dust off of his jacket.

The sniper swallowed a hard lump in his throat. He wasn't too keen on being called a schoolgirl, but he didn't dwell on the teasing words for long.

The spy waltzed toward the sniper and grabbed the collar of his shirt with an almost vicious sort of swipe. He paused for a moment, his eyes studying the look of surprise and suspiciousness on the sniper's face, as if he were reading a thought-provoking piece of literature. After he seemed to be satisfied with whatever it was that he found, he leaned in and kissed him.

The sniper could feel his watch wrapped around his wrist, and he could hear his heart thumping wildly within the confines of his ribcage, but it seemed like one of those moments in which time didn't exist. At first his hands flailed as if he were on a rocking ship that refused to be steady, but like a sailor gets his sea legs he felt himself calm down, and allow the rhythm to sink in.

After an immeasurable amount of time they broke apart and came up for air, their foreheads touching slightly as hot, panting breath curled into the opposite mouth.

"Is that the first time you kissed a man?" the spy whispered to the sniper, their eyes locking. His fingers crawled up the sniper's neck and ran through his hair.

The sniper nodded, gulping. He had momentarily forgotten how to speak.

"Rest assured it will not be the last, Kookaburra." The spy, leaning back with an almost regretful expression, swiftly disappeared into nothingness, flourished by smoke wisps that climbed to the ceiling and dissipated in the light of the sun.

The sniper grasped at the empty air. That fleeting moment of fantastic passion had come and gone much too soon.

Quick, jackrabbit footsteps scampered up the steps.

"_There_ you are, Legs!" the scout yelled shrilly, racing into the room and swinging his baseball bat as he danced on his tiptoes. "Jesus, man, we've been looking all over for ya! Don't do any of that campin' bullshit today, we need you down here. Seriously, man, the cart's almost made it." He stopped his hyperactive chatter for a moment and frowned. "What happened to your face?"

The sniper, still surrounded by a hazy cloud, touched his face and felt the dried blood.

"Whatever, it doesn't matter. Just hurry up, man. Stop fucking around up here, we need ya." The scout turned on his heel and skidded back down the stairs.

The sniper gingerly picked his bow up from the ground and followed after the scout. It felt as though he was walking through a swamp of molasses.

Focusing through the battle was going to prove to be very difficult.


	15. The Hickey

It was RED's third loss in a row, and the sniper was quite positive that the fact he wasn't exactly trying his hardest could have something to do with that.

He spent the battle walking in a daze, as if he had just woken up from a year-long nap. Everything he did seemed ten times slower than what everyone around him did; got his ass blown sky-high a couple of times. He was undoubtedly the worst player on the team that day.

It felt a bit like trying to run through water, this feeling of an oppressive tide that was surrounding him and wouldn't let him clear his head.

Just when he felt as though he was actually able to focus again and pierced an arrow right through the BLU pyro's (presumable) eyeball, he and the spy bumped into each other running head on through the barren catwalk overhead.

There was a brief, yet heart-pounding moment of locked eyes running thoughts that would never be spoken before the spy mumbled, "There is no one to see," and knocked the sniper up against the wall, sneakily avoiding the shattered glass window just to the right. They kissed almost hungrily, the spy working his way down and nuzzling his nose in the nest of the sniper's neck. The bow had slipped out of the sniper's fingers and clattered to the floor.

Unbeknownst to the sniper, the BLU heavy and medic trotted across down below, taking their sweet time as they guided along the cart.

Had the sniper been paying any attention whatsoever, he probably could have killed them both then and there and led RED to victory.

But he didn't.

After being chewed out by the soldier ("MY DEAD GRANDMOTHER'S SEX DRIVE HAS MORE PASSION THAN THE FIGHT YOU GAVE TODAY"), who savored punching creative insults to people far more than any sane person should, the sniper really just wanted to leave.

Drive off in the van.

Listen to the radio.

Clear his head.

Let everything steep in.

But he couldn't, because just when he had packed up and started for the door, someone grabbed the back of his vest and dragged him down the hall to his office. The heavy, who was sitting on the bench in the lobby, twiddling his thumbs, chuckled and winked at the sniper as he disappeared around the corner.

"You almost forgot about our session, Herr Mundy," the medic cooed, drawing the shades to the window in the middle of the door and locking it behind him. "You have more important things on your mind? Or you just have no desire to remember?" He turned, holding his hands behind his back and wearing a dark expression.

"I'm sorry, doc, I—I just wasn't thinking." The sniper removed his hat and sighed. His shoulders slumped exhaustedly; if the doctor was going to make him stay late again and do crazy tests, he may have to break his no-caffeine rule in order to stay conscious. "Erm," he ventured after a moment's thought. "Do you think we could maybe reschedule this to next week?"

Or next year?

Or _never_?

"_Nein_." The medic stalked over to his desk and began to dig through a thick stack of manila folders. "I will be busy. Monday I will be performing an open heart transplant in the operating theater at Karloff Hospital. Tuesday the woman is making me go out to dinner with her. Wednesday I am taking Archimedes to a dove racing competition. Thursday and Friday are my personal research days. I cannot change my busy schedule just because you _do not feel like it_ today, Mundy." He extracted a fat folder and dropped on the desk with a thud. "Besides, I am just going to try a bit of electroshock therapy. It will not be long. Well, that's what I've been told, at least."

"Does… does that _hurt_?" the sniper asked tentatively as the doctor briskly marched to an equally mahogany cabinet behind his desk.

"God, let's hope so," the medic answered softly, pausing in his pursuit to find the kit. With his back turned, the sniper couldn't see him grinning. "Ah! Here it is!"

The medic turned, clutching a heavy wooden box that looked a bit like a record player. "Lie down on the couch, _bitte_."

The sniper was a bit too long for the red leather couch that leaned against the shrouded window; his head was propped up on one side of the arm rest and his feet dangled a good several inches beyond the other. He placed his hat on his chest as the medic crouched down beside him.

"I received this as a gift two years ago. This is the first time I've gotten the chance to use it." He snapped open the clasps of the little square trunk. "Oh, I am _so_ excited!"

Inside, the entire weight of the trunk was taken up by thick black machinery, dotted with knobs and buttons and dials. It seemed a bit like a radio. Extending from a wire was what appeared to be a pair of white earmuffs, which was tucked in a velveteen pouch along with a brown rubber mouth guard.

The medic plucked the mouth guard out and waved it over the sniper's head. "Open wide," he instructed, trying to hide his feverish anticipation underneath a raspy drawl that merely accentuated his… quirkiness.

"What's that for?" the sniper asked, jerking his head away as the medic went to shove it in his mouth.

The medic paused for a moment, staring at it. "I believe it is so you do not bite your tongue."

"Oh—" The medic took advantage of the sniper's open mouth and shoved the guard in forcefully. The sniper gagged a bit on the unexpected wad of rubber now pressing down on his tongue.

The medic held the earmuffs over the sniper and was about to slip them on but paused, squinting at something near the sniper's throat.

"Hm," he mumbled, pushing the collar of the sniper's shirt aside and leaning in closer.

"Wrrrt?" The sniper tried to crane his neck back to see.

"You have a little mark on your neck. Strange place to get a bruise, Herr Mundy."

The sniper's eyes widened slightly as he realized where the bruise was from, but the medic didn't dwell on it.

It was very odd to think that he might have to start making an active effort to hide hickeys from now on.

The earmuff-things actually clamped over his temples, not his ears, and the medic twisted something at the top to tighten them. The pressure was on the very cusp of aching.

"_Scheiße_," the sniper heard the medic grumble as he stared up at the ceiling. Drool was beginning to wet itself around the corners of his mouth from the guard. "Only 130 volts? For 20 seconds? Who is the _fraulein_ that created this?"

Switches were switched and knobs were turned. The sniper squirmed uncomfortably on the couch.

"_Are you ready, Herr Mundy_?" the medic asked, his voice breathy and saturated with glee.

"_Urr drrrrnt trrrrnnk shrr_," the sniper managed to choke past the mouth guard. Despite his anxiety he couldn't help but notice the fact that he'd sounded strangely similar to the pyro.

"_Vunderbar!_" the medic exclaimed, neither noticing nor caring that the sniper was obviously not ready.

It didn't matter either way, because just as the medic reached for the button to initiate the convulsive flow, there was a knee-shattering knock on the door.

"Ach!" The medic threw his hands up in frustration. The sniper sat up and wriggled the rubber guard out from his mouth, wiping the string of spit that fell on his chin. He could see a monstrously sized silhouette through the curtained window.

"DOCTOR!" bellowed the voice of the heavy as he began to pound on the door again.

The doctor swung open the door, resting his hand on his hip and squinting at the heavy like a disapproving mother. "What do you want?"

"You must come quickly, Doctor," the heavy implored, clasping his enormous paws together and shaking them earnestly. "The demoman's head is stuck in the toilet!"

The medic gave a disgruntled sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Again?"

"Da." The heavy nodded desperately, his eyebrows contorted worriedly.

"Alright, alright," the medic turned and headed the medigun propped up against his desk. "I'm coming."

"I will run ahead to make sure he is safe!" the heavy told him as footfalls bounded against the linoleum floor of the hallways.

The doctor stumbled after him, hastily shrugging his medigun backpack on over his shoulders.

The sniper shifted his feet from the couch to the floor and carefully tucked the saliva-covered mouth guard back into the velveteen pouch. He tugged the earmuffs off of his head and slipped them into the pouch as well. Then he fell back against the sofa and sighed, relieved that his therapy session had been so conveniently interrupted.

He pushed his fingers under his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes.

"You're welcome."

The spicy smell of tobacco wafting through the air told him who it was before he even looked. The sniper brought his hand away from his eyes and saw the BLU spy leaning against the doorway, a cigarette tucked between his teeth.

The sniper felt his chest tighten, warmth seeping throughout. "You did that?"

"I'm assuming you don't know much about electroshock treatment, Lawrence, and neither does your medic." The spy plucked the cigarette from his mouth and walked into the room. "It is not pleasant. I wanted to spare you the pain."

"Thanks mate," the sniper said, feeling honestly very grateful. He peered past the spy. "How did you get in here?"

"Oh, I've been here for hours. I locked your heavy weapons guy in the basement and came in disguised as him. By the way, I winked at you in the lobby but you never winked back."

The sniper got the sudden image of the heavy slamming his fists against the basement door, hollering for help. "You can't do that," he said, frowning.

"But I already did," the Frenchman responded, smirking. "Besides, it's not like he's going to _starve_."

The sniper crossed his arms, still frowning.

"Alright, alright, I am _sorry_. Locking the fat man in the basement and pretending to be him was wrong of me. I will never do it again as long as I live."

"I don't believe you," the sniper sighed. "But I don't feel like arguing with you about it, either."

The spy walked a few more steps foreword and stuck out his hand. "Shall we depart before your medic realizes the demoman is already halfway across town by now?"

"_SCHEIßE!_" came a piercing, yet slightly muffled screech from the floor beneath them. "HEAVY! YOU _DUMMKOPF_! I WILL _STRANGLE__ YOU!"_

"I think he just did."


	16. The Doppelgänger

"Go to your car," the spy said, flipping his cigarette case after he helped the sniper up off the couch. Below, they could just barely hear the furious thumping of the medic's boots as the German marched upstairs. "I will take care of the medic."

The sniper's frown deepened. "You're going to kill him, aren't you?"

"Is that a problem?"

The sniper wasn't particularly fond of the medic, but that didn't mean he wanted anyone killing him off. "Well, kinda. Yeah. He's on my team."

The spy smirked at the sniper. "_D'accord_. I will not kill the sadist Nazi, if it means so much to you." He pressed his gloved fingertip against the hidden button within his cigarette case. "I have a better idea, anyway."

The sniper stumbled backwards over his feet in surprise as the wisps of smoke dispersed to reveal a mirror image of him. The disguised spy grinned toothily at the sniper's shock and shoved his hands playfully in the pockets of his pants—or rather, the _sniper's_ pants. How on earth did he get his pants?

"Crikey, that's—that's _crazy_," the sniper sputtered, gaping at the spy and pushing his hat back so he could scratch the top of his head in disbelief. "Is that really what I look like?" He wandered to the side, curious as to what he looked like from another angle.

"_Oui_." The spy didn't bother mimicking his voice, which the sniper was thankful for; _looking_ at himself was weird enough. He couldn't imagine adding _listening_ to himself on top of that. "I suggest you go to your van, Lawrence."

"Er, yeah…" The sniper nodded as he started backwards for the door, his eyes still glued on the Other Him.

"Wait for me, Lawrence," the spy ordered him softly, sitting back down on the couch as the sniper turned the corner. The sniper subconsciously shoved his hands in his pockets the same way the disguised spy had before.

Outside, the sky hung heavy with saturated clouds. A cool, wet breeze tickled the back of his neck and kissed his cheeks.

It would probably rain soon.

On his way to the van, it occurred to the sniper that he and the spy theoretically could have just left together without any disguises needed. So why did the spy…?

He stopped in his tracks halfway across the parking lot, a horrible feeling simmering in his gut. He could kick himself.

Of course.

_Never trust a spy. _

No doubt the bloody French bastard was lying, using the sniper as a tool to get into the base and steal their documents and kill everyone and _Christ_, he'd been too caught up in wallowing in his queer little infatuation with the man that he hadn't even realized it.

The spy didn't… the spy wasn't interested in the sniper. He was just using him because he knew he was stupid and gullible enough to be tricked into trusting him.

In a sudden downpour of frustration and self-disgust, the sniper turned on his heel and started running back towards the entrance of the base. He skidded to a halt at the door and swung it open, but something pulled at the back of his vest and wouldn't let him budge.

"The medic will be very confused if you walk back into the base, Lawrence," the spy whispered, resting his chin on the sniper's shoulder from behind. "Especially seeing as you just demanded an end to these therapy sessions by punching him in the face." The spy ended the sentence with a pleased chuckle.

The sniper slapped his hand against his face. "I told you not to hurt him!" he grumbled into his palm.

"_Ahhem_, you told me not to _kill_ him." The spy's hand snaked around the sniper's waist. "He is most _certainly_ not dead. Dead people can not scream and roll on the floor, clutching their bleeding faces. At least, I hope not. That would be horrifying."

"Oh, _Christ_, mate," the sniper growled, shrugging the spy off of his back. "I'm pretty sure that you're just trying to make my life more difficult."

He could just imagine the next day at work. The sniper wasn't keen on being too close to his teammates, but he didn't want there to be animosity, either.

The spy cocked his head to the side, the smiling falling off of his face. For a moment he looked slightly insulted, almost hurt, but he soon turned his frown into a wrinkle-nosed sneer. "_Au contraire, mon ami_. Letting the freak give you electroshock therapy would make your life far more difficult than anything I could ever do." He lowered his eyelids and lit up a cigarette. "Your medic is a sadistic son of a bitch. I regret listening to you and sparing his life."

"The doc's not so bad, really," the sniper mumbled as he turned to face the spy, not quite sure if he believed what he was saying. "I don't think he means any harm…"

"He does," the spy answered curtly, blowing smoke into the moist air. "Either that, or he is a fool who knows nothing of psychology. Perhaps both." He cleared his throat. "Shall we commence to _the van_?" The spy held out his arm in the direction of the car in a sweeping bow. "After you."

The sniper crossed his arms, not budging.

"Is something the matter?"

"_Why are you here, Spy_?" the sniper asked darkly. The feeling of mistrust that bubbled up inside of him hadn't quite left. In fact, there was something almost unnerving about the spy's playful quality.

The spy dropped his arm and furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"Why did you sneak into the base?"

The spy laughed lightly. "I think you know why, Lawrence."

The sniper tried not to let his reddening ears soften his suspiciousness. "Well, you could've snuck around to do spy stuff. Stab backs, steal information… that sort of thing. I dunno. Spy stuff."

"Hm." The spy's gaze wandered off. "I can understand you not trusting me in your base. It would probably be wise of me not to follow you here anymore, no?"

"No," the sniper answered quickly in agreement. "I mean—erm—_yes_. Yes. Ah, listen." He began to rub the back of his neck uncomfortably. "This whole… _thing_. With us. It might not be the best idea to continue." He swallowed.

The spy let the concept sink in.

"Funny," he hissed, sucking on his cigarette and narrowing his eyes. "I could have sworn I said the same thing this afternoon before you so passionately convinced me otherwise. I suggest you stick to your word, bushman."

"I suggest you stop—stop taking advantage of me!" the sniper snapped, reacting quickly and viciously as if the spy had poked him in a sensitive spot.

"_Taking advantage of you_?" the spy scoffed, throwing his head back and cackling. "Lawrence, you are a grown man! You cannot be 'taken advantage of'." He added finger quotes for emphasis. "You are entirely aware of what I am capable of. You are merely trying to make up excuses for the fact that your common sense was cast aside by your prick."

"Oh_, _piss_ off,_ you bastard!" the sniper spat. He pushed past the spy and started towards his van.

"Where are you going, Lawrence?" the spy demanded, still standing near the entrance.

"To my van!" the sniper barked over his shoulder.

"And _then_ where?"

He was bloody clever, that spy.

The truth was, the sniper didn't know where he'd be going from there. He never knew, really.

The spy reached into his suit jacket and walked to the sniper's side. He pulled out his trademark cigarette case and snapped it open, holding it out to the sniper. "Would you like a cigarette?"

The sniper shrugged miserably, then plucked one out and popped it between his lips. The sniper pinched the cigarette as the spy leaned forward, touching the end of his to the sniper's and letting it catch fire.

The peals of smoke that curled from their mouths embraced and danced skyward.

"I don't get you," the sniper told the spy frankly.

The spy snickered. "What is it about me that you don't get, _mon ami_?"

"I don't get why you _like_ me so much."

The spy laughed again, louder this time.

"What's so funny?" the sniper frowned.

"You. _You_ are very funny, Kookaburra."

"Oy, stop calling me that. Those things are annoying as hell."

"My apologies. What would you rather I call you?" the spy asked, still grinning.

"Well, you do seem to be keen on calling my given name."

The two men began to gravitate towards the van. Neither of them had made any mention of it, but rather it had been an unspoken agreement.

Good thing, too.

It was starting to rain.


	17. The Anchor

It had stopped raining by the time the spy woke up.

The van was pitch black save for a sliver of light that managed to wriggle in through the shaded window, but when his eyes adjusted to the darkness he brought his wrist up to his nose and squinted at his watch face; five minutes after three in the morning. He thought as much. For some strange reason he'd had a habit of waking up around that time almost every night.

It was usually pretty tough going back to sleep.

The apricot air freshener the sniper had hung on the rearview mirror didn't do a particularly good job masking the smell of piss. It was pretty faint, but still unmistakable. Neither of them commented on it.

The spy was curled up like a contented cat on the Murphy bed, facing the wall. He couldn't see the sniper, but he could feel the warm pressure of his arm slung around his waist. He snored a bit, but it wasn't too loud.

The spy sat up gingerly, moving carefully so as not to wake up the sniper. The man's arm slipped down and rested on the spy's lap like a seatbelt. Suppressing a yawn, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

He knew he would have to leave now, but he didn't really want to. He looked down, his eyes following along the sniper's arm, to his bare back, up to his face. The spy had watched many people sleep, and every time he couldn't help but spend a long time studying their faces. There was something very telling about the way a person looked when the slept.

The spy had come across many grumpy people who looked pleasant and peaceful when they slept, and many old people who looked young, but the sniper just looked troubled. It struck the spy as strange that someone could knot their eyebrows in their sleep.

A chunk of the dark hair he usually kept combed back fell down over his eyes. The spy lightly brushed it back over his ear.

He didn't want to leave, but he had to.

He cautiously climbed out of the bed, prowling on the tips of his toes. His trousers, shirt, and jacket had been hastily thrown into a pile at the foot of the bed.

He slipped his shirt on, pausing a moment to glance at the anchor tattoo on his right forearm. The night before the sniper had taken an interest in it, tracing the design with his fingertips before pressing his lips against the spy's neck. Later, when they'd settled down to just lying together in the bed amidst a cloud of cigarette smoke and sleepy satisfaction he'd asked what the meaning behind it was.

The spy had shrugged at the question. He'd gotten it years ago from a Spanish marine who hired him for a hit, way back before BLU had found him. It didn't really have any sort of meaning.

It sure had history, though.

Just as the spy was yanking on his trousers the bed creaked.

"Oy."

The spy's stomach dropped. He was hoping he would be able to leave without waking the sniper up.

There was a sharp click. The sniper was sitting up in the bed, squinting at the spy, his hand resting on the wall lamp to his right.

"What're you doing, mate?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep, _mon loup_." The spy began to button his shirt.

He didn't. The sniper continued to watch the spy dress, resting his arms on his knees and wearing a sober expression. "What's the next day gonna be like, then?" he asked.

"Like any other day," the spy answered, trying to sound brisk but coming off cold.

During the ride from the base to the long stretch of nothing they'd both come to the conclusion that they'd pursue a relationship. It was not something that would be questioned or debated any longer, because that would merely overcomplicate things.

As if this situation was any bit _simple_.

They would play the roles of indifferent enemies on the battlefield and meet up on the frontlines as… lovers? It was strange to even think the word.

The sniper told himself that it shouldn't be difficult, seeing as this _was_ the spy, whose entire career depended on secrecy and deceiving. Problem was, the spy seemed as unsure as the sniper was.

The spy was unsure. Not about his espionage skills, no, he was entirely too confident in that.

It was the closeness.

"So, you're leaving?" the sniper grunted, still watching the spy with heavy eyes as the Frenchman fiddled with his tie and slipped on his gloves. The sniper couldn't help but notice only then that the spy hadn't taken his mask off the entire night.

"I have business to attend to, Lawrence."

The sniper let him leave without saying another word, but when the spy had slipped out the door and the sound of footsteps faded away, he crumpled back down onto the bed and bit hard on the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to resist the urge to slam his fist against the wall.

What they had done… It wasn't sex per se, but it was more than anything the sniper had done, had ever dreamed of doing with a man. And at the time it had felt indescribably fantastic.

But now it's hours later, and he's just an sad old man in his underwear lying in the Murphy bed of a camper van, and the man he was with just left because he's got better things do and far more interesting people to be with.

Christ… he really was a loser, wasn't he? The spy knew it. Of course he knew it. The spy was a cultured man who wore cologne and sock garters and probably spent his off days in Morocco, cool as Humphrey Bogart.

To the spy, the sniper was fine for a bit of fooling around, but after that's been done he hightails it out of there because it's cramped and smelly and weird and covered in jars of piss.

Jars of _piss_.

No wonder his parents despised him.

He was an utter disappointment.

Far off down the road, trekking the cold pavement in shoes that weren't made for walking, the spy considered several times just turning back.

But he didn't.

He let the cool winds whip his curls of smoke past his covered ears. Later on, once he found a pay phone, he'd call headquarters. They'd send a helicopter.

They didn't ask questions, thankfully.

Even if they did the spy would never answer them.


	18. The Birthday

The aching florescent lights above twitched with the uneven frequency of dripping water. The occasional _bzzt_ made when they flickered was accompanied by the steady rhythm of squeaky, Italian leather shoes slapping a recently mopped floor.

Further down the hall, a hunched janitor dawning on his late fifties guided a heavy, wet mop against the linoleum, whistling a tune that hadn't been on the radio in a long time.

They were probably the only two people on that floor that hour.

"What a horrible shift to work."

The custodian jerked his head up—had someone called him? He hadn't even noticed the footsteps until now. Wasn't it a bit late for employees to be roaming around the headquarters?

Walking towards him briskly down the hall was a thin figure in a fitted black suit. It wasn't often that he came to headquarters not clad in a blue piece, but he at least took the time to put on a tie that matched his allegiance. The spy had shed his balaclava to reveal the slightest of wrinkles and head of short, neat black hair peppered with grey at the ears; signs of approaching age. Despite the entirely minor flaws, he was handsome in a dark sort of way.

He smiled at the janitor, in a manner that obviously attempted to be warm but came off as a bit unsettling. The old man coughed uncomfortably and heaved the mop into the soapy plastic bucket at his feet. "Ain't so bad," he muttered, frowning.

The spy's hollow eyes drifted downward to the ring of keys attached to the man's waist, but didn't linger very long. He quickly snapped his gaze back up and asked, "Do you always work this early, _mon ami_?" He had checked his watch only a few minutes beforehand; it was just about four in the morning.

The janitor shrugged, whacking the mop against the floor again. "Only on Fridays. It's not so bad, really. They pay a lot extra for the undesirable hours."

"I can imagine. I wish I could say the same for us agents." He threw his head back and his laugh echoed in the barren halls. Still grinning widely, he reached within his jacket, snapped open his cigarette case, and waved it under the man's nose like an especially fragrant dessert. "Care for a cigarette?"

"That'd be great. Thank you kindly." The spy handed the man a cigarette, which he accepted with gnarled fingers and poked between his crooked, yellow teeth. "You got a funny way of talking. You from Europe?"

"Yes. France." The spy flicked his lighter and lit the janitor's cigarette, then his own. "In fact I will visit very soon." He glanced at his watch and raised an eyebrow. "Well, it seems that I must be going. Thank you for the chat, _mon ami_. _Ciao_."

Still smiling softly, he turned on his heel, well aware that the janitor was entirely perplexed. The spy began to make his way back down the wall towards where he had entered, fingering the teleporter room key in his pocket.

It should probably be mentioned that he shouldn't have had to pickpocket the janitor. He had been given a key to the teleporter room months ago with his promotion, but it had been eaten by a sloth when he was in South America looking for ex-Nazis. The spy had considered just cutting the creature open and pawing through the intestines to find the key, but he was much too squeamish. He could stab backs and slit throats, that was all fun and games, but he was no medic. He had no desire to see the insides of _anything_. Besides, the sloth had been kind of cute, in a strange, lazy sort of way.

The spy was too lazy to ask request another key, so he had just taken to pickpocketing the janitors. It was an old habit, something BLU had originally hired him on account of, but rarely asked him to use the skill. Cloaking watches and dead ringers were fantastic, truthfully, but there was something artistic and psychological about pure and simple pickpocketing. At the height of his game, the spy was able to mess with a person so expertly that he could walk away wearing their top hat and carrying their wallet and they wouldn't even realize it. That was back when he was just a kid, though.

The spy unlocked the door to the teleporter room and slapped his hand against the wall within, searching for the light. When it flicked on, he was greeted with rows upon rows of teleporters, neatly labeled with various locations.

They'd split France up by regions, with one teleporter per region. The teleporter for Picardy was located on the very outskirts of Amiens, so it shouldn't take him too long to get to the village he was looking for.

The spy never quite enjoyed teleporting, especially to places far away; it always gave him a slightly nauseated feeling. Sometimes he wondered if other people felt like that too, but if they did, they never said so. And of course he wasn't going to ask.

Less than a minute later, the spy stumbled out of the French teleporter, his stomach rocking. Taking a minute to steady himself, he leaned against the hard rock wall and closed his eyes. The surface felt cool.

He opened his eyes and found himself in the dark basement of a church. Good thing his watch came with a built-in flashlight.

It was relatively barren, in a foreign, unfriendly sort of way. There were a few extra pews, a shelf of books, white fold-up chairs, and cardboard boxes. The spy started towards the spiraling stairs. They were creaky and wooden, and the dim light guiding him along the way came from candle-filled hollowed-out nooks in the walls.

The stairwell led to the small, cramped lobby of the church. Past the glass panels and rows of pews and below an enormous figure of crucified Christ he could see a memorial set up by the altar. Bright flowers surrounded by unlit candles and pictures of a deceased young boy. One wreath bore a hand-painted ribbon saying _REPOSER EN PAIX, ETTIENE_. Most of the floral arrangements were enormous wreaths, but towards the very corner of the altar was a modest bouquet of wildflowers tucked in a wicker basket.

The spy glanced up at the figure of Jesus, which was currently staring down at him skeptically. "_Pardonnez-moi, Dieu,_" he said to the figure with a smirk and a shrug, before running over and grabbing the flowers.

Sometimes things disappear. Sometimes things go missing. Sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they do.

Whatever the case, a spy probably took it. That's sort of what they do.

He continued to take advantage of the wee hours of the morning and hopped on a bike he found leaning outside of a small house down the road. It was green, and whoever owned it had tied ribbons to the handles. The spy put the flowers in the basket and started peddling down the road.

The village wasn't too far away, although it wasn't really considered a village anymore. People had forgotten its name years ago, after the Nazis burned down the houses and shot the residents, though.

The skeletons of buildings can still sometimes be seen. The road is still there, and you can walk down it, and sometimes you'll find things along the way. Burnt compact mirrors and earrings and maybe a shoe or two. Just little reminders of what once was.

The dead had been left untouched. The Nazis had practically pissed on everything they could get their hands on, but left the local cemetery alone. The spy supposed that perhaps even Nazis had standards.

After World War II had ended and bodies had been burned and people started rebuilding, only one person was buried in the cemetery, and she hadn't lived there for twenty years.

When she first died, the spy wondered why she chose to be buried here. Being put in one of the graveyards of Paris seemed to be good enough to him, especially seeing as it was a lot closer. But now that he was older there was a part of him that understood.

It was quiet.

The tombstones of old cemeteries are different than the ones today. They're thinner, crooked, leaning to the left and the right. Engraved with epitaphs and prayers and skeletal angels. Her tombstone was the newest in that graveyard; some of them dated back to the seventeen hundreds.

She didn't have a prayer or a write-up. Just a simple name and date.

_ELOISE MARIE NOIR_

_1911-1949_

The spy placed the flowers underneath her name, then straightened back up and clasped his hands together.

He didn't visit often; this was probably the second time he'd come since she died. The last two times he didn't like to think about; they were both those rare occasions in which he found himself overcome by emotion and broken open all vulnerable and raw.

He wasn't sure what compelled him to come this time. The good part was that he didn't feel the overwhelming sense of hysteria he had the other times. He was nervous, yes, and very solemn. But also somewhat peaceful.

Perhaps he was finally beginning to accept it.

Work would start in an hour and a half, and he would have to go back through the teleporter and commence the routine of ruthless slaughter. That life seemed so distant compared to where he was now. It felt like another dimension.

But it wasn't. It was his life, and he'd have to go back.

Before he left, he leaned down and kissed the top of the tombstone. He hesitated a moment, then whispered for no one to hear, "_Joyeux anniversaire__, Maman_."


	19. The Deadringer

The sniper hustled towards the entrance to the RED base, his rifle slung haphazardly over his shoulder.

He'd slept in again. Not as long as the last time, but he'd still be a few minutes late to set-up.

He skidded into the building and ran towards the spawn room, a stitch in his side starting to ache. His stomach grumbled angrily; he hadn't eaten anything that morning. He clutched his #1 Sniper mug in his hand, trying to guzzle down cold coffee as he hurried.

If you've ever tried to run and drink coffee at the same time, you'll know that it's quite difficult. Thank goodness this is fiction; otherwise the sniper would have probably choked by now, and then where would we be?

The sniper had yanked open his locker and was beginning to root around for the empty Mason jars he kept stored in there when a light cough nearly made him jump out of his skin.

"You missed the meeting I called this morning, Her Mundy." The medic was standing over him, his hands behind his back. His eyebrows were raised slightly, and his mouth almost had a hint of a smile.

The sniper felt his insides go cold. He had not been looking forward to seeing the medic today. The man was almost an unpredictable as their delusional soldier; he had no way of preparing for how the doctor might treat him after "he" had punched him in the nose yesterday.

"Sorry, Doc," he mumbled, averting his eyes downward. What was he supposed to say? Should he apologize for punching the medic? But he didn't _actually_ punch him, it was the spy. But the medic couldn't know there was a spy…

"It appears there was a BLU spy in our base after hours yesterday."

If words could take a physical form, these would be fists punching the sniper in the stomach. "You, the heavy, and I were the only people in the building at the time. From what I have gathered, it appears the spy locked our heavy in the basement, masqueraded as him to fool me, and then pretended to be you and assaulted me. I was quite worried, Herr Mundy. I wasn't sure what he'd done with you."

"I just left," the sniper managed to spit past a dry mouth. "How'd you… how'd you figure out it was the BLU spy?"

"I found Heavy locked in the basement and we deduced it together. Obviously he was aware that the spy had disguised as him, he saw it happen before his very eyes. So it was the _spy_ who interrupted our session, not him. It was Heavy who then pointed out that the spy must have also disguised as you, as assaulting me is not in your character. You can be a… threatening enough man on the battlefield, Herr Mundy, but off of it you are quite docile." He smirked in an almost patronizing manner down at the sniper. "But I digress." The medic crouched down to the sniper's level and locked his eyes with the other man's. "What I wanted to ask you is—did you see the BLU spy at all yesterday?"

The sniper swallowed and broke the eye contact. "No, mate. Can't say I have. I just—just left after you went running off. No offense or anything, but I really didn't want to do that electricity shock junk—"

"_Electroshock therapy_."

The sniper hurriedly began to gather up the empty jars. "Yeah, that. I—I wasn't feeling up to it. Decided it would be best if I just left. I didn't see anybody at all."

The medic stared at the sniper with narrowed eyes for a moment, thinking. Then he stood back up. "Strange," he murmured, crossing his arms. "That the spy would fool with Heavy and me, but not with you."

"MISSION BEGINS IN THIRTY SECONDS." The cold, judgmental voice of the Administrator echoed throughout the building.

"Yeah. Weird. Well, I gotta go, doc—"

"And what's even stranger," the medic continued, wandering in front of the doorway to keep the sniper captive. "Is that the spy didn't touch anything. Heavy and I swept the entire base—nothing out of place. We never even found him."

The sniper pushed past the medic and started down the wooden ramp.

The medic was a clever man. Really clever. He was able to observe things and figure out stuff that would fly over the heads of everyone else.

The sniper tried to look at it from the medic's perspective…yes, the fact that the spy hadn't bothered him did look suspicious, didn't it? His stomach dropped. And he had acted quite suspicious, hadn't he? The spy had teased him before about what an awful liar he was… was the medic able to pick up on that, too?

"MISSION BEGINS IN TEN SECONDS."

Below him, the engineer was setting up a sentry against the wall. The pyro stood with him diligently, occasionally puffing out curls of hot fire. The sniper snapped his head away, making a mental note not to go anywhere near the sentry. No doubt the spy would try to sap it, and if the pyro was there… The sniper shuddered. He'd be burned to a crisp, wouldn't he? He could just hear the sudden crackling of skin as flames erupted spontaneously on a solid form, hear the screams as the suit was chewed away and the skin melted into puddles of stinging pain…

For a moment he felt a fleeting surge of hatred for the pyro, but then he remembered—_no_—the pyro wasn't this evil monster. The pyro was weird, sure, but he was oddly… innocent, in an almost childlike sort of way. When he got excited he'd jump up and down and clap his hands and giggle like a giddy kid about the get ice cream. He didn't deserve to be the butt of the sniper's frustration.

"FIVE… FOUR…"

So… who did?

"THREE… TWO…"

Himself, probably.

"ONE."

It was funny, the way gunfire began so rapidly right after the Administrator's last number rang out. The sniper nested himself in the creaky attic of the building that housed the RED intel—a few too many windows for his liking, but people didn't often go running up to bother him. The sniper figured it was one of those days where he'd just like to sit alone and pop heads from a distance. Up there, he only thing he had to worry about was the enemy sniper, but it seemed like his BLU counterpart had decided to set up camp somewhere else.

"I suppose you put yourself here to distract me, _mon loup_?" The sniper jerked his head away from the scope and glanced towards the stairs that lead to the intel room. The BLU spy materialized on top of them, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows. In his hands he idly twisted a dark blue fedora, a hat the sniper sometimes saw him wearing on occasion.

The sniper felt his ears grow warm, and he glanced down at his empty coffee cup, which he pointlessly picked up and moved to a different spot for the sole purpose of not having to look at the spy. "Thought we weren't gonna talk during battles, mate," he mumbled.

"_Oui_, of course. I merely wanted to apologize for leaving so abruptly the night before."

At the word "night" the sniper's gaze flashed towards the stairs leading downward.

The spy rolled his eyes. "There is no one here, Lawrence. They're far too occupied with our intel. Your scout left it near our entrance." He cleared his throat and straightened his tie. "I shall see you tonight?"

The sniper nodded. _Tonight_. His fingers tightened around his rifle and he tried not to think about what _Tonight_ would entail.

"You still have the address, yes?" The sniper's second nod made a slight smile curl onto the spy's lips. "Well, _mon loup_, I must depart. Your intelligence is _begging_ to be stolen, after all." He whimsically placed the hat back on his head, and then yelped as a pair of arms grabbed him from behind. He began to desperately try to claw at the gloved hand that was holding a bonesaw to his throat.

"_Finally_!" the medic growled over the spy's shoulder, his jaw set in a tight, vicious grin. "I have been looking for you all over, spy." He pressed the bonesaw even closer; it snagged on the fabric of the balaclava. "Would you care to tell me why you were sneaking around the RED base yesterday, _bitte_?"

The spy caught the sniper's gaze, his eyes wide and urgent as he struggled under the medic's grip. The sniper continued to sit at the window, slackjawed without a clue what to do.

"Not speaking today, _hm_? Usually you are so talkative." The medic snapped his neck away from the spy's ear to the look at the sniper. "If you would so kindly finish off the spy, Herr Mundy."

Finish off…?

The coffee from earlier that morning began to bubble up the sniper's esophagus. He… he couldn't do that. He couldn't kill the spy. All he could do was stupidly, wordlessly stare back at the medic, because he couldn't possibly think of anything else to do. Truthfully, he wished he had the spy's cloaking device. He'd rather just disappear.

"What are you _waiting_ for, Mundy?" the medic spat desperately, his grip on the spy growing weaker as the man continued to struggle. The sniper couldn't move; it was as if he'd forgotten how limbs worked. "Bah!" The medic frowned deeply in frustration, having given up on enlisting the sniper for assistance. He heaved the bonesaw towards the spy's jugular, ripping the fabric of his balaclava and letting it mingle with tattered flesh. Hot blood spilled out, quick and almost pressurized at first, but soon reduced to a feeble to dribble. The spy's head lolled to the side and his hat fluttered to the ground and it was entirely too apparent that he was quite dead, but the medic continued to cling to the corpse, his bespectacled gaze boring into the sniper.

"Is something wrong, Mundy?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in an almost innocent manner. Blood that had spurted from the spy's throat dotted his chin. "You look like you've seen a ghost." Instantly, he let go off the body and it swiftly fell to the floor like a sad ragdoll. The thump the spy's head made when it hit the ground made the sniper jump, and the medic chuckled as he walked away, yanking at his rubber gloves.

For a moment everything felt like static, but then the muffled silence broke as the sniper felt his stomach violently heave, and it did that a few times, but there wasn't enough in it for him to actually throw up. He buried his head in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the body to fade away, for it to go away like it never happened. He held his breath and waited for the smell to waft away, but instead it turned into French cologne.

A hand gently stroked his ear.

"That was not good, _mon loup_."

The sniper raised his sagging face and turned to see the spy crouching beside him, placing the hat that had fallen on the ground back on his head. The sniper opened his mouth to ask how, but the spy answered before him by opening his jacket and revealing his gold pocket watch. "I didn't really die."

The sniper swallowed and the saliva stuck in his throat. His throat felt dry.

"We never really die. You know that."

"I know."

"Should we find ourselves in such a situation again, it would be wise not to hesitate." He leaned forward and kissed the sniper on the cheek before disappearing.

As shamefully sickening as the thought was, the spy was right. If they kept sparing each other's lives, the others could catch on.

A sharp pain tore through the sniper's temples. And of course, it had been the _medic_ to be the one to see the sniper slip up, the one man who was probably the most likely to figure it out based solely upon his constant, coincidental involvement in what the sniper and spy were attempting to pursue.

He wasn't sure how he'd be able to explain his cold feet. Problem was, he would have to eventually. Technically, he was still supposed to be going to the medic for head-shrinking.

The sniper groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose underneath his sunglasses. Maybe this time he should _actually_ punch the medic just to get the stupid sessions done and over with.


	20. The Face

The spy exhaled quietly, fiddling with the silver fastener on his right shirt cuff. The cramped, carpeted lobby was quiet, save for the motel manager behind his desk, rustling through paperwork.

The spy had come to this motel a few times before. It sure as hell wasn't the Ritz, but it was clean enough and secluded enough to suit the most basic of needs. It was a wooden ranch-type building located off a lesser used highway. Far behind it, on a hill, loomed an uncharacteristically dark, Victorian house the motel manager lived in with his mother. The spy had spoken to the man a few times before—he was certainly strange, there was no doubt about that. On one occasion he took him into his office for sandwiches and spent what felt like hours explaining the process behind the taxidermy animals that surrounded them.

Needless to say, the spy was using his cloaking device.

The bell on the front door tinkled, and both the spy and the manager looked up as the sniper walked into the lobby.

The spy sighed and couldn't help but let a smile crawl on his face. The sniper, bless him, had attempted to comb his greasy hair in a more becoming fashion, and had changed out of his uniform into a hideous mustard yellow with an equally horrible butterfly collar. It was tucked into the greenish-gray pants he seemed to love so much, and oh _god_—he had a black belt with tan boots. They didn't match in the slightest.

The effort was almost laughably pathetic, but at the same time utterly endearing.

He asked for a room, all the while attempting to discreetly glance about the room as if he'd be able to figure out where the spy was. He knew the spy was in there somewhere; that had been the plan, after all.

The spy followed close behind as they left the lobby and walked back outside. He hovered close to the sniper, and couldn't help but roll his eyes when he got a whiff of strong, musky cologne. He supposed _subtlety_ was not a common thing in Australia.

He managed to slink into the room before the hotel manager passed the key off to the sniper. He paused to think as the two men chatted idly (he felt a stab of sympathy for the sniper, hoping for his sake that the manager wouldn't bring up his taxidermy), wondering where to put himself. He could stand behind him and say "Boo"; that was always fun. Might kill the mood, though. He could be a bit sexier and just spread himself out on the bed—of course, if he did that, he'd been a right hypocrite for judging the sniper on his lack of subtlety, though, wouldn't he?

The door was closed and the key was pocketed, and the sniper stood awkwardly, wringing his hands together as he surveyed the room.

The spy decloaked a foot away from the other, his hands clasped behind his back. "Good evening, Lawrence."

Maybe it's because he was expecting it, but the sniper didn't stir in surprise. Instead, he smiled wordlessly and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"I trust you had little difficulty locating our current habitation?"

"Nah, it was easy enough." He cleared his throat. "Bit creepy, though, if you ask me. Feels like something out of a Hitchcock film."

"Well, _mon loup_, let us pray that James Stewart is not watching us through a pair of binoculars. That would be most unfortunate." He slipped his hands up to the sniper's face and cradled his jaw, grinning fiendishly before leaning in and smashing his lips against the sniper's.

The sniper exhaled roughly through his nose, his eyebrows skyward as he was momentarily lost in the sudden kiss. When he regained his ability to think properly, he clutched the spy's wrist and broke away. "You plan on taking that mask off, mate?" he asked in a low voice.

The spy's face hardened and he pressed his lips together in a tight, sour line. "It is crucial that I maintain anonymity, Lawrence."

"Christ, lad, I'm not asking for your life's story. I just want you to take off the bloody mask." He stared at the Frenchman with the tired eyes of a bloodhound. Of course he wanted to see the spy's face—thirty-five years alone and he finally finds someone, he's going to want to see their face. It wasn't an unreasonable request whatsoever.

The spy's hands fell away from the sniper and he instead pinched the bridge of his nose.

"It's not like you're _Batman_ or anything—"

"You are asking a lot of me, Lawrence. Were we not on separate teams I would do it in a heartbeat, but…" He sighed heavily, the kind of rare sigh that reflected all that he carried on his shoulders. "You do realize how much is at risk right now, don't you?"

The sniper nodded solemnly, but kept his gaze on the spy steady.

The spy sighed again, and then shook his head. "Fine. But you must not let a _soul _know what I look like. Should we see each other off schedule you _must_ pretend you do not recognize me. And please, prepare yourself. My beauty has been known to blind the weak."

"I'll manage."

The spy tucked his fingers underneath the edge of the balaclava and peeled it carefully. His black hair, flat and combed to the side, was ruffled like the feathers of an especially hysterical hen. He licked his gloveless hand and attempted to smooth it down, looking a bit like a cat trying to groom itself.

The sniper stared at him, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "You're older than I thought you'd be," he observed bluntly, eyeing the graying sides and quiet lines of age.

The spy stopped trying to smooth his hair and grunted. "_Merci beacoup_," he responded flatly, smirking.

"How old _are_ you?"

"A spy never tells."

"Honestly," the sniper said sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck. "I thought you were _younger_ than me."

"Perhaps I should have kept the mask on, then."

"Nah." The sniper grinned toothily. "I think you're right handsome."

Wearing a most mischievous expression, the spy clutched the sniper by the shoulders and kissed him again, more violent than he had before. The spy could be a gentle lover if he wanted to, but in all truthfulness sweet, slow passion seemed laughably unfitting with the sniper. There was no reason to treat the outback assassin like a lady. His touch tangoed down the sniper's chest and plucked at the shirt, untucking it from his pants. He slipped his hand down past the waistband and sliced his fingers through the sudden brier of coarse hair. _Bushman indeed_, the spy thought to himself, his lips curling in a grin as this continued to exploit the sniper's mouth.

In the confines of a quiet room with drawn shades they were able pursue the unspoken fantasies that had been running through both their minds. Casting aside their clothes was a sigh of hot-breathed relief but at the same time a vicious gasp of greedy excitement. Nails dug into scarred flesh, flesh that was used to cuts and bruises but never of this nature. Logical thinking was clouded by a fog of sheer animal instinct, teeth bared and claws sharp.

It all happened so damn fast.


	21. The Piss

The sniper stifled a yawn and slipped his fingers underneath his sunglasses to messily rub his aching eyes. Focusing on a target was proving to be harder than usual; it felt like everyone was at a speed twice as fast as him.

It could have something to do with the fact that he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.

He couldn't pinpoint an exact time as to when the hungry whispers and exploring fingers turned into an entwined yet relatively chaste embrace as they fell into sleep, but he did remember waking up with that unmistakable fullness in his bladder.

He had slithered out of the spy's arms and hastily yanked on his pants and clawed his shirt over his body, all in the tired mist of being half-awake. He had stumbled out to the parking lot and struggled to unlock the van and tore apart the back, searching for an empty jar. When he returned to the motel room he found the spy sitting up, smoking one of his trademark brown cigarettes and wearing a sour expression.

It wasn't exactly something he had any desire to replay in his mind, but long story short, the spy made it quite clear how he felt about the sniper exclusively urinating in jars. And the sniper made it equally clear how _he_ felt about the spy sticking his nose in his business. Such a heart-to-heart openness about said feelings eventually resulted in a bloody nose, a broken lamp, and a Frenchman swearing in six different languages as he stormed out of the motel room into the crisp night air.

The sniper sighed, glancing at the filled jar at his feet with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Yes, he was entirely aware that it was disgusting, and that there was probably something deeply wrong with a man who would rather get dressed in the middle of the night to piss in a jar in his van rather than take a few steps to the bathroom right in his very motel room.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't realize there was a guest in his sniper's nest until the cold barrel of revolver kissed his right temple.

_Think of the devil_, the sniper thought bitterly.

"Apologize," the spy growled.

The sniper furrowed his eyebrows jerking his head to look up at the spy. "_Apologize_?" He could've laughed if he wasn't so angry. "You have the _balls_ to ask _me_ to apologize after you—?"

There was a menacing click as the spy cocked the gun. He nuzzled it deeper against the sniper's head. "_Apologize_," the spy repeated through clenched teeth.

The sniper sighed. "Alright. I'm sorry."

"And _why_ are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry I punched you in the nose and kicked you out of the motel room."

The spy began to caress the spot just above the sniper's ear with the revolver. "Something a little more endearing, _s'il vous plait_."

"I'm sorry I punched you in the nose and kicked you out of the motel room… _luv_."

"Mm," the spy purred, relieving the pressure from the sniper's temple. He spun the revolver in his fingers like a Western outlaw before slipping it into his suit jacket. "_Tres bon_. I do not like grudges, _mon loup_. _Ciao_." With that, he melted into the air.

The sniper shook his head. Of course the man couldn't be bothered to apologize _himself_ for the putrid string of insults he had flung at the sniper (several of which the sniper had never even _heard_ until that moment), or for knocking the lamp off of the table—the lamp _the sniper_ had to pay for. Imaging explaining that and all the blood to the motel manager.

Quick, messy footsteps were getting closer and closer behind him. The occasional sprits of flame told him it was the pyro… but wait, no, the pyro was on the other side of the map, rushing the sentry nest, wasn't he?

Oh.

It was the _BLU_ pyro.

"_Hrrdrrh hrrdrh hrhh!_" A stream of hot fire enveloped the doorway and hungrily gnawed at the air as the pyro charged in. He waved the flamethrower to and fro, streaking the air as the sniper hastily yanked his kukri out, holding it forward.

The pyro was prone to kamikaze type suicide missions, knowing full well that even if he'd died he probably took out the other guy with the after-burn. The flames erupted onto the sniper's chest and he cried out in agony as they peeled at his flash, hot tears stinging his eyes in the wake of the smokey breath. The gurgling sound the pyro made and the blood on his kukri told him that he had successfully plunged the knife into the masked man's stomach, but he was on fire, and oh god it hurt, _it hurt_—

With so much as a moment's thought, he grabbed the Mason jar full of urine and smashed it, dowsing himself. The flames, which had themselves been quite substantial in size and quantity, were quelled to nothing in a matter of seconds. The sniper gingerly held out his arms and stared at his sopping, scarred body a moment, considering the miraculous fire retardant qualities of his own urine in awe. He didn't dwell on it long, though, because the piss only made the burn wounds on his chest and arms sting more. The flames had eaten away at the fabric of his shirt and what was left stuck to his melted, raw chest in tatters. He leapt over the dead pyro's body and, crossing his arms over his chest like an awkward prepubescent girl who hadn't started wearing a bra yet, bounded down the stairs yelling for the medic.

He stumbled across the engineer, who was persistently fiddling with his dispenser with three nails situated precariously between his lips. In the corner, a mini sentry beeped and whirred. Mini sentries were cute little things that the engineer could whip up in half the time he could a normal sentry, and they were much less powerful, but he'd still seen it take down the BLU heavy in full health. Anything the engineer made was not a force to be reckoned with, and right now he was having a bit of trouble reckoning with the tray at the bottom of his dispenser.

The sniper was somewhat relieved to find the dispenser. It would probably be a hell of a lot gentler than the doctor could ever be.

He slowed down to a walk and let his arms fall to his sides, and when he got to the dispenser he leaned his elbows against it and sighed. A cool, tingly sensation crept over his flesh and began to slowly mend it like a skilled seamstress.

"What in _tarnation_ is that god awful smell—?" The engineer jerked his head up, and then jumped a little when he saw the sniper's looking down at him. "Oh," he pulled the nails out from his mouth. "Sorry, slim. Didn't see you there."

"Blu pyro got me good. Wanker almost burned me to a crisp."

"And you, ah…" The engineer paused from his work a moment, eyeing the stinking urine that still clung to the sniper's shirt (which the dispenser was so aptly stitched back together—the sniper had long ago stopped wondering why the machine could recreate clothes but not dry a bit of pee). "You took care of that in a jiffy, huh?"

"Yeah, well…" The sniper averted his eyes and scratched the back of his neck.

"'Desperate times', I guess." The engineer cleared his throat and went back to fixing the tray at the bottom of the dispenser.

"Well… g'day, Truckie." His person fully healed, he went to turn on his heel and go back to his nest, but the engineer coughed again. "Hey, uh, listen, hoss," he called to him, standing up. "I mean, I don't want to be a-pokin' and a-proddin' or nothin', but, well, I had this uncle that used to collect _his toenail clippings_ in jars, and it got to a point where they were all over his apartment, he used to hide 'em under floorboards and behind bookshelves and such, and he ended up trying to lie with his neighbor's cat, in the biblical sense, if you know what I mean." He sighed and rubbed his forehead underneath his helmet. "All I'm trying to say, Stretch, is that sometimes people do things because they're lookin' for help and don't know how to ask for it."

The sniper felt his ears grow warm as he digested the engineer's words. The engineer had a gentle way about him, the way he spoke, but what he said was essentially the same thing as the spy had said the other night; his Jarate was getting out of hand.

If the spy and the engineer had it figured out, what about the rest of his team? And BLU? Were they all just laughing behind his back about what a disgusting hoarder he was?

"Well, erm…" The sniper struggled to choose his words wisely. "If a bloke were to have a problem like that—I mean, _I'm not saying I do_—but if someone did, what would you suggest they do about it?"

"Well, slim, I'd go talk to the doc about it if I were you. I mean, I only know a lick of psychology; I've just got a Bachelor's in it. But I reckon the good doctor knows a heck of a lot more than I do."

The sniper's shoulders sagged. "Yeah. I guess. Thanks, Truckie."

"Don't mention it, hoss."

The sniper didn't see any trouble on his way back to the nest, and if he did he probably would've been worse for wear—his mind was boggled with troubles enough.

If the engineer was so smart and clever and had a Bachelor's in psychology, why the hell couldn't _he_ help a bloke out? The sniper was sure the medic had probably never even taken a class on the subject, let alone dedicated his studies to such a science. The Texan seemed to do a lot of observing and a lot of suggesting, but at the end of the day all he did was play with his toys. And even if the sniper persisted, which wasn't something he would do anyway, the man would probably eventually tell him to bugger off. He was nice enough, that engineer, but at the end of the day he kept to himself.

What else could he do? He didn't have a regular doctor… he wouldn't know how to find a therapist even if he tried—hell, did RED give him health insurance? He didn't want to pay for expensive therapy sessions out of his own pocket… but he certainly couldn't keep pissing in jars for the rest of his life. He didn't want to shag anyone's cat.

The sniper only had one choice, really, if he wanted to try nipping this thing in the bud; he'd have to pay a visit the medic.


	22. The Kritzkrieg

The sniper stood in the lobby, deliberating. He could make the easy choice and just walk out the front door, to his van, and keep on peeing in jars, or he could actually take some initiative for once, turn on his heel, and walk to the medic's office.

The sniper gulped.

Would the medic even be able to help him? The man obviously barely knew anything about psychology. The sniper, who had flunked biology in college, probably knew more about the brain then the medic did at that very oment.

And yet… the doctor was his only hope, wasn't he?

Resisting the urge to slap his palm against his face, he forced his legs to walk away from the entrance, struggling as if he were trying to turn the broken crank of an old, stubborn machine. _Why_ did he always have to make the right decision?

The heavy was sitting outside of the door, an enormous heaping mass teetering on a plastic chair that seemed miniscule underneath his body. There was something slightly unsettling about getting close to the heavy off of the battlefield; it felt a bit like inching towards a hibernating bear—there was no telling when they would wake up, or what would happen if they did.

He wore a pair of half-moon shaped reading glasses that were comically too small for his head. The sniper was amazed they managed to hang on that long. In the same hands that had punched clean through a pyro's belly the gigantic Russian gently clutched a small, delicately bound book that was just hanging on to life. The sniper couldn't possibly translate the title.

"Please, Sniper," the heavy drawled, not glancing up from the book as the sniper's hand hovered over the doorknob. "Do not disturb Doctor. He is very much disturbed already."

"Er, sorry?"

"Doctor is…" The heavy set the book down and let it rest on his lap. He pinched the fragile frame of his reading glasses and carefully removed them from his face. His expression contorted in fret as he struggled to find the right word. "Doctor is very _sad_. I do not know why." He tucked the reading glasses into the pocket on his shirt which often housed a little, stuffed version of their medic. It was a sickeningly cute sight to behold. The sniper couldn't help but wonder where it was.

He threw another hesitant glance at the door to the medic's office. "Well… I guess I should come back later, then?"

"Da." The sniper stuffed his hands in his pockets and went to turn back towards the lobby. "Wait! Nyet!" the heavy suddenly burst out, his mammoth hands thrown outward. "Perhaps you can speak with Doctor, da? You can ask him why he is sad. I myself would ask but Doctor…" The heavy frowned and twiddled his hands together. "Doctor angers at me quickly. It would not be wise..." His eyes, a delicate, frosty blue that seemed unfitting compared to the rest of his face, flickered to the floor for a moment, but quickly jumped back up and met with sniper's gaze. "But _you_! Oh, Sniper, Doctor likes you very much. He speaks well of you. You can ask Doctor what is wrong!"

The sniper sighed and felt his entire body sag. "Yeah. Sure, mate. I'll talk to the doc. No worries."

The heavy watching tentatively behind him, the sniper carefully twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Almost immediately after he stepped in and carefully closed the door behind him, a strong, minty smell attacked his nostrils.

The doctor was slumped at his desk, his hand draped over the barrel of his kritzkrieg medigun. Healing fumes seeped out and crawled off of his desk like an octopus made of smoke; its tendrils curled and danced menacingly, cradling the medic's head and shoulder as if it were some deep sea beast that had trapped the doctor in its lair like an especially depraved damsel in distress.

The sniper tiptoed closer; he would have sworn the medic was dead if he hadn't seen the fumes being pulled in and out of his nostrils. He raised his arm and tucked his nose in the crook of his arm, masking away the almost unbearable minty stench wafting from the medigun; it was beginning to make tears well in his eyes. He leaned over the desk and shifted the kritzkrieg over, groping for the switch. When he found it and flipped it, the gun groaned to a halt. The fumes lingered, dissolving a bit but refusing to leave the stuffy office.

"Doc? Doctor?" The sniper leaned down next to the medic and shook his shoulder softly.

The medic's head flew up as if the sniper had slapped him in the face. _"_Hm_? Vas_? _Wo sind die Damen_?" His eyes were wild and bloodshot and a line of drool had crept its way down his chin. His spectacles were wildly askew and his hair stood up on the side he had been laying on. The sniper had never seen the doctor looked so disheveled, and that was just his face; his bowtie had been torn off and cast aside to the floor, and he had thrown his physician's jacket off in favor of just his vest, which had been haphazardly unbuttoned to reveal his wrinkled and suspiciously stained shirt. It was an almost disturbing sight—the medic was typically nauseatingly pristine in his dress.

The sniper decided to let the overheal from the kritzkrieg wear off before asking any questions, giving the doctor a moment to realize who he was.

The medic stopped rubbing his eyes sleepily after a moment, pausing in a far more alert manner and letting his hands slip away from his face, his gaze falling on the sniper.

"What do you want, Herr Mundy?" he asked in a gravelly voice, wiping the spit from his chin with the back of his ungloved hand.

The sniper sat himself down in the velvet red chair on the other side of the medic's desk. "I—well—listen, mate, I need to talk to you." The words felt wasted on the not-quite-sober medic, but he spoke them anyway. "It's about my jarate—"

"Ah, yes. _'Jarate'_. That is what you call your filthy habit of collecting your own urine in bottles, _ja_?"

"Erm, yes." The sniper's ears grew warm. "I feel like it's… well… I'm not sure how to say this…" He tried to think of how the engineer had worded it, but failed to remember anything except the part about his uncle shagging the cat. "I feel like it's become a problem that I can't figure out how to fix."

The medic groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. "Perhaps we can discuss it another time, Herr Mundy. You may have noticed that this is not a good day for me."

The sniper hesitated, watching the medic sit still with his hand still clutching his face, no doubt in pain from the headache that often accompanied the effects of overheal. "What happened, doc?" he decided to venture asking.

The medic aged ten years with each sigh; he was beginning to look ancient. "I suppose you were not there to witness the BLU demoman so graciously choosing the battlefield as an appropriate venue to humiliate me." The medic took his hand away from his eyes, removing his glasses along with it. He folded them and shakily placed them on the desk. "It appears that my wife has been unfaithful to me… on multiple occasions."

The sniper's eyes widened and he leaned back in the chair. "Holy dooley." And then another part of the story clicked. "And with the _BLU demoman_?"

The medic nodded mournfully, his eyes drifting down to the depths of his innermost thoughts. "I cannot say I am surprised in the least, I had been suspecting for quite some time, but…" His Adam's apple bobbed. "For some reason I am incredibly distressed by it."

"Well, yeah, of course you are. I mean, he's shagging your _sheila_, mate, that's… I mean, if there's anything to get upset about, it's that."

"I don't even love her. I don't even like _her_. Why should I…?" He buried his face in his hands, and for a moment the sniper just sat and watched as the medic silently wept. The only telltale sign was the way his shoulders shuddered with each sob. "I just—" He lifted his head, his face bright red and contorted in pain. "I just don't know what I did _wrong_—" He wiped the heel of his hand underneath his slowly dribbling nose.

The sniper shifted uncomfortably. It was one thing to be alone with the medic. It was also one thing to be alone with a crying man. It was an entirely unthinkable thing to be alone with the medic when he was crying. He was at loss for what to do.

"I dunno," he shrugged, searching. "Maybe you needed a bit more… romance? Girls, women, they go for that sort of thing. Flowers. Chocolate. Chocolate flowers." He was speaking not from experience but what he had seen in films. "You know. Romance."

The medic sniffed and chuckled bitterly, shaking his head and still staring down at his desk.

"What's so funny?"

"I am being told by a _homosexual_ how to woo a woman." He rested his head on his hand and tiredly sighed again, not noticing the color drain from the sniper's face.

"Wh…_what_?"

The medic knew.

Oh, _God_, the medic _knew_.

"Do not bother lying to me, Herr Mundy, you told me yourself." He spoke in a blasé manner as he began to rub his temple, no doubt still nursing the headache.

"Wha—? No, no, I did not! _You're_ lying!" the sniper stammered, clutching the arms of the chair with white knuckles.

"You wouldn't remember, of course, you told me when you were under hypnosis." He rolled his eyes. "_Bitte_, Herr Mundy, calm down. I am not in the mood to clean up after you if you have a nervous breakdown in my office. I was just on the verge of having one myself." He picked his spectacles back up from the desk and replaced them on his face. "I didn't bother believing it at first, seeing as you had _also_ told me you were a water buffalo. However…"

The medic clasped his hands together and rested them on the desk. He seemed almost like his usual self, save for the disheveled appearance and the occasional after-panic shudder. "Some other telling behaviors have led me to the conclusion that it was one of the truths your subconscious chose to reveal to me. I'm assuming it's true, isn't it?"

A slight grin curled on the medic's lips with his words. The son of a bitch _knew_ it was true; he just wanted to savor the moment when the sniper said _yes_. Yes, it's true. What else was he supposed to say? He was cornered, and like the spy loved to tell him, he was a god awful liar.

"Yes," the sniper growled through clenched teeth, staring at his feet. "It's true."

"You are very lucky to be employed by RED, Mundy," the medic told the sniper frankly. "They don't have standards."

The sniper cringed at the words. It was true; RED was willing to hire from the very deepest pit of the gutter so long as whoever was down there was the best bloody assassin they could find. It was true; RED had no standards.

But the sniper did. _He_ had standards. _Professionals_ had standards.

"You do realize that homosexuality is a disease, don't you, Herr Mundy?"

The sniper nodded, still staring at his shoes.

"_Diseases must be cured_."


	23. The Pain

**Author's Note**: _I'm terribly sorry about the delayed update, everyone. I sustained a concussion and was a bedridden for several days, and then had to be gradually reintroduced to technology. It was quite miserable. If you're considering getting a concussion because you think they're all the rage, I would advise against it._ _Please, enjoy the chapter; I hope for everyone's sake that the bump I received did not have an effect on my prose, but I suppose you lovely people will be the judge of that._

* * *

><p>The medic was in a considerably cheerier mood than before as he swabbed conductant on the sniper's temples, growing considerably more talkative and excited as he prepped his patient for the electroshock therapy he had reluctantly agreed to. It was as if he had completely forgotten about his wife—the sniper wouldn't be surprised if he actually had. It seemed like he forgot about her quite often.<p>

"Mm," the doctor purred contentedly as he removed the sniper's hat and glasses, his lips curling into an unsettlingly excited grin across his unshaven face. "I'm thrilled that we are finally doing this, Herr Mundy."

The sniper was in a familiar position, once again lying flat on his back on the couch, his head on one arm and his feet dangling inches past the other. His hands were clasped together on his chest like a carefully positioned corpse at an open-casket funeral. He couldn't help but remember how appalled the spy was at the idea the medic wanted to do electroshock therapy on the sniper… He curled his nine toes tightly in apprehension.

The medic rolled up his sleeves and steepled his hands, pressing his fingers to his lips. Crouching by his side, he stared at the sniper for a moment, his eyes narrowed in thought. "I should probably get the heavy," he murmured, suddenly standing briskly.

The sniper craned his neck as the medic started for the door. "The heavy? What for?"

The medic cracked the door open and poked his head out, beckoning the heavy in. There was a distant creak as a plastic chair gasped in relief, and the heavy entered behind the doctor, following like an enormous shadow.

"What do you need, doctor?" the heavy asked, tucking his tiny book into one of the pouches at his waist. He glanced at the sniper on the couch with a confused expression.

"Assistance, _bitte_." The medic hurried back to the sniper's side and flipped open the wooden trunk that housed his EST machine. "I do not have restraints, so you will have to hold the sniper down for me."

The sniper's jaw unhinged itself. "Wait, _restraints_? Hold on a bloody second, why do I have to be—? _Urf_!" His words were cut short by the rubber mouth guard that had been unceremoniously shoved into his mouth.

Part of him was beginning to regret agreeing to this. The spy's words were ringing through his ears as the medic twisted dials and turned knobs. His fingers shook slightly as they wrapped themselves around button—he pinched his lips together and tried to suffocate feeling of quivering thrill that was beginning to quell up in his body.

_"I'm assuming you don't know much about electroshock treatment, Lawrence, and neither does your medic… It is not pleasant. I wanted to spare you the pain."_

What kind of pain was it? And for that matter… how did the spy know so much about electroshock therapy in the _first_ place?

"Hold his arms and legs down, Herr Medved," the medic directed the heavy, barely masking the obvious yearning that hung precariously in his voice. The sniper was too distracted by his own popcorn-jumping nerves to notice the medic using the heavy's real last name; he was only aware of the steel grip that pinned his limbs to the couch. Suddenly, 'the _heavy'_ seemed like an entirely too accurate pseudonym for the enormous Russian.

A sudden panic overcame the sniper. He began to try and squirm out from the heavy's clutches, but it only made him hold the sniper down even tighter. Hot, nervous air flew in and out of the sniper's nose with increasing pace. "Uhhr durrn wurrn turrh durrh durs urrhnymurhh!" he cried fervently, gagging the words past the mouth guard. "Urhh chuuhrnng murhh murhhnd!"

"Doctor…" the heavy said apprehensively, knitting his eyebrows together. "Sniper is… not good."

"Bah, he's fine," the medic said, waving his hand as he continued to fiddle with the dials of the machine.

The heavy frowned and turned his head away, just trying to be thankful that the medic never became a pediatrician.

"And now it begins," the medic whispered breathlessly, his eyes barely comprehensible past the menacing glare of his spectacles. All the sniper could see of him was his shark-like grin, hungry and needing as he bent over clutching the earmuff-like electrodes. The sniper jerked his head away, feeling tugs of horror in his heart at the medic grew closer and closer.

"Ach! Stop moving!" the doctor snapped in a guttural tone at the sniper, slamming his palm down on the man's forehead to keep him still. He wriggled the paddles on and tightened them to the very brink of a painful squeeze.

"_Eins_…" he began with bated breath. His shivering fingers wrapped tightly around the sniper's head, one hand pressing down on his skull and the other cupping his jaw, cradling him with the motherly tenderness of a python. "_Zwei_…" He shifted anxiously, his hands still embracing the sniper. "_Drei_."

It was as if the medic had somehow condensed a thousand angry wasps into the form of electric waves and jammed them into the sniper's skull. The shock was really only a split second, but in that split second the sting had torn through his head with the speed and the ferocity of lightning. For that split second all he could comprehend was the indescribable pain, and from then on he could remember nothing.

The heavy held on to the sniper as he began to convulse, just like the doctor told him, but he was beginning to feel as though maybe the doctor had made a mistake in doing this.

The sniper was repeatedly slamming his head against the arm of the chair, his eyes squeezed shut. The doctor clung on to him, keeping a tight hold on him. His eyes were closed as well, closed gently behind his fogged spectacles, his teeth gritted in satisfaction, wallowing in a sudden inward pleasure as the sniper made pained, animalistic noises through the rubber in his mouth.

After a few seconds the sniper's convulsions were reduced to jerky twitches, and he and the medic were both panting exhaustedly. The sniper gasped for breath through his nose like a terrified cat that had just been plunged in an icy bath of water, whereas the medic, grinning and giggling to himself blissfully, gulped in the air of a man who had attained a fantastic level of sexual pleasure.

He rested his head against the arm of the chair and let his hands slip away from the sniper's face. The Australian groaned and rolled over, curling himself into a fetal position as the heavy removed his grip as well. Sweat dampened the back of his neck and suddenly the room felt incredibly warm.

"Do not do it again, Doctor," the heavy said solemnly, standing over the mess of a man that was still clinging to the side of the couch.

"No," the medic sighed, swallowing. He took a moment to adjust his glasses and turn away from the couch. He was considerably calmer, but his face was still a violent shade of red. "No… I… I do not think I will." He cleared his throat and hoisted himself up, then deflated again with a long sigh. He glanced at the balled up assassin on the couch and then quickly looked away, like a schoolboy peeking in the girl's locker room. "One more request, Herr Medved," he said quietly. His words were to the heavy but he said them to the floor. "Please take him to his van. I… I need to use the restroom. Excuse me." He hurriedly pushed past the Russian mercenary and whipped himself out the door.

The heavy stared at the exit, and then looked back at the man lying on the couch. The sniper was moaning softly, having spat out the rubber mouth guard. With his eyes still squeezed shut, he was attempting to claw off the electrodes with shaky, slow-moving hands. The heavy sighed, then pinched the top of the headpiece and carefully wriggled it from his teammate's head. The sniper groaned in relief when it came off and buried his face in his arms, as if he couldn't bear to open his eyes in the light.

"Come on, Sniper," the heavy said in a low tone, scooping the lanky man into his gorilla-sized arms. "You can take nap in your van."

The sniper was a tall fellow, almost as tall as the heavy, but _goodness_, was he _skinny_. As the heavy carried him down the hallway he couldn't help but chuckle to himself, thinking of how his mama back home would react if she saw boys were being bred that thin.

The heavy nudged the entrance door open with his hip and walked out to parking lot. The team kept complaining about how cold it was getting, but he didn't quite notice it. It still felt hot out to him, but he was always the type that felt warm, the type that tiny-fingered women would go to so he could wrap his toasty paws around their hands.

He was able to admit that the nights came quicker, though.

"Wha—? What in _tarnation_?"

The heavy stopped short to see the engineer approaching him with a deep frown on his face. Above his goggles his eyebrows were contorted in worry. "Oh. Hello, Engineer." The heavy cocked his head. "What are you still doing here?"

"I—er—I, I had to run back and pick up a few—a few things." He seemed too distracted by the state of the semi-conscious sniper to formulate his words properly. "What's wrong with him? What happened?"

The heavy frowned, feeling a twinge of suspicion. The Texan was acting rather… skittish. "Where is your truck, engineer? I do not see it."

"Son of a… I—I used a _teleporter_, you—!" He caught himself mid-insult and paused to rub his hand underneath his helmet in frustration. "Will ya, will ya _just_ tell me what happened to slim?"

The heavy looked down at the man in his arms. "Medic… Medic performed the shocking treatment on him."

The engineer's jaw tightened and his typically tanned face turned a frightening shade of white. "Did he now?" he asked in a cold monotone as his fingers curled into fists.

The heavy shifted awkwardly on the spot. "Er, _da_. I must put Sniper in his van now. Goodbye Engineer." He went to move on, but the engineer grabbed him by the arm.

"I'll do it." His gaze was intense enough to send chills down the heavy's spine even past the smoked lenses.

"Er…" The heavy glanced back at the entrance to the base, remembering how distressed the doctor seemed to be. Perhaps it would be wise to check on him. The engineer and the sniper were friends, after all, weren't they? Maybe the engineer was just worried about the sniper, that's all. "Very well," he said with a pang of reluctance. "Sniper," he softly jiggled the man in his arms awake. "I am going to put you down now. Engineer will help you to your van."

The sniper wrinkled his nose and mumbled something inaudible.

The heavy pressed his lips together and grunted as he gingerly made the sniper vertical. When the sniper's boots touched the ground, his knees buckled and he would've collapsed like a sack of bricks if the engineer hadn't been there to catch him around the middle.

"You will be good with him, Engineer?" the heavy asked as took a few steps back towards the entrance.

"Yeah, yeah," the engineer grumbled through gritted teeth as he heaved the delirious Australian towards the van that was several feet away. "Just fine."

"Da." The heavy nodded. "Well, have a good night."

"Same to you, pardner."

When the entrance door swung closed behind the heavy a few seconds later, the spy exhaled deeply, his shoulders sagging with the weight of the tall man. "_Fils de pute_, Lawrence," he groaned under his breath, dropping the Texan accent as he dragged his supposed rival to his van. "What have you gotten yourself into this time?"


	24. The Urchin

**Author's Note**_: I owe another apology. This chapter was delayed because I was greeted back to school with three projects and rehearsal till _10 o'clock _all week. The play went fantastically and we were sold out both nights, but I digress. Long story short and blunt, I've been so fucking busy and I could barely stop to take a piss. Enjoy the chapter._

* * *

><p>The spy inhaled the smoke of his ninth cigarette that hour. The sniper's ash tray was currently overflowing with the crumpled butts of anxiety. A battered compilation of Sherlock Holmes stories he had found in a sparse yet surprisingly classic bookshelf above the bed sat, untouched, on his lap. He had been a fan growing up, so there was something inexplicably comforting about it just being there.<p>

When he was a child, he would sometimes pretend that he was one of the Baker Street Irregulars, that gaggle of homeless children that helped Holmes solve cases. It made things just a tad bit better.

Unfortunately, on the streets of World War II era Paris, there was no clever detective who would pay children just for tipping him off clues. Life wasn't quite as innocent as that.

The sniper had been asleep for the past several hours. At first he drifted in and out of babbling consciousness, his eyes too groggy and his mind too fogged to even recognize the man sitting up in the bed next to him. The spy knew that he would be awake, eventually.

What worried the spy was if he would recognize him when he woke up.

He ran his tongue over his teeth and pressed his forefinger against his temple. What had _she_ been like after electroshock therapy? He remembered there were slips of things she forgot, like the fact the asylum served pudding on Wednesday, or that his middle name was Arnaud. But she never forgot _who_ he was.

Of course, she had known him much longer than the sniper had.

The spy had discarded his mask in hopes his face might trigger memories. Unsurprisingly, there were no mirrors in sniper's van, which he found somewhat relieving. He'd always considered himself a handsome enough man, but was growing slightly self-conscious about the bags under his eyes and the gray around his ears.

He sighed and pressed the cigarette to his lips again.

Perhaps he was over-thinking the situation. She had gotten the EST done multiple times; so many times he would need to grow a few more hands to count. The sniper, on the other hand, had only gotten it once. The spy was no expert on how the brain worked, but he was sure that the impact of electroshock therapy to the brain once in a lifetime was probably much less harmful than it is once a month.

The sniper shifted under the thin blanket.

The spy froze, watching the other man's back rise as he snorted in a deep breath of air through his nose and let it out it with a soft grunt. He lifted his head slightly, raising his large hand to his eyes to rub out the sleep. He moved with the slow acceptance of someone deciding it was time to wake up.

The spy swallowed, staying stationary and keeping a steady eye on his bedmate.

"Crickey," he murmured as he sat up, pausing a moment to hold his head in his hands, no doubt feeling the stinging after effects. He didn't nurse the headache for long, though, because being a man of acute perception, he quickly realized he was not alone and whipped around.

He stiffened a moment like a cat with its fur on end, his expression alert and almost hostile.

Battle mode.

"Lawrence."

At the sound of his own name the sniper's eyes widened and expression softened with surprise, eventually turning into relieved recognition when his eyes took in the contours of the face staring at him, the calculating blue eyes that reminded him of nights that made the pit of his stomach clench excitedly at the very memory.

"Holy dooley," he exhaled softly, shaking his head. He slumped tiredly against the wall. "I'm sorry, mate. For a second there I almost didn't know who you were."

The spy said nothing, instead looking down at the paragraph from _A Study in Scarlet_ below him. He kept a stiff upper lip, but inside he could have collapsed with relief.

_Merde_.

He was getting far too attached to this one.

"Do you mind telling me what you're doing here?"

The spy cleared his throat and stubbed the cigarette out into the ashtray. "I suppose you don't remember much of what has occurred as of late, do you, Lawrence?"

"I…" The sniper knitted his eyebrows together and his eyes traveled downward. He could remember himself, and his job, and his van, and the spy, but there was something foggy and off about everything. As if he was missing a substantial chunk of information that his brain had misplaced.

The spy's poker face betrayed itself and softened into a solemn, almost pitying expression. His age was showing, and even though there wasn't a mirror for miles, he knew it. But he didn't quite care. "What is the last thing you remember doing?"

The sniper frowned and ran his hand through his hair, then letting it fall to tug on his ear. "Sleeping in that motel with you."

The gentleness in his tone was touching, and the spy felt a sudden burst of frustration when a lump formed in his throat. He swallowed the pesky sign of emotion back down. "Do you remember our argument?"

"Oh! Oh, crikey, that's right!" The sniper touched the tips of his fingers to his forehead. His expression quickly darkened. "And then you made me apologize to you even though the whole bloody thing was your fault! You know, I still haven't forgiven you for that, you wankin' bastard, I had to pay for that lamp—"

"Lawrence, please. Don't overwork yourself." The spy held his hand up as he stared down at his lap. He was surprisingly able to keep his typically low patience tolerant, but it was evident he wanted to stay on the subject. "Do you remember what happened after that?"

"Er…" The sniper furrowed his eyebrows even deeper to the point were his forehead hurt. His Adam's apple bobbed as he tried to sort through his memories. The spy had pressed his gun against his head… the lamp… the _lamp_… oh god…

There was a sickening flutter in his chest. He really, truly couldn't remember. It felt as though the memory had been completely removed from his mind, as if someone had stuck something in his brain and sucked it out…

"I don't got a bloody clue," the sniper whispered in astonishment. He gaped at the spy, as if the face itself would give him answers. "Wh—why can't I remember that? What—what the hell happened to me? Why—?"

"Calm down, Lawrence, please. I will explain everything." He reached into his suit jacket for his tenth cigarette with a sigh, as if he was getting ready to buckle down for an especially tiring ordeal, speaking with a slow, exhausted drawl that was not typical of him. He was trying his damnedest not to look his lover in the eye.

"Of course, I was not present for the entire… occurrence, so I cannot let you relish every detail, but I know enough to probably jolt your memory."

He closed the case with a snap as the sniper leaned over in anticipation.

"After I left you I planned on sapping your engineer's little toys. He was crouching down, trying to fix the tray I had broken, and I was just about to uncloak and stab him when, lo and behold, you come running around the corner looking like overcooked game hen and reeking of your own waste. The engineer essentially suggested the same thing I had last night, that you should discontinue your urine collecting because it is undoubtedly an unsanitary habit. For some reason that is completely beyond me, you decide to listen to the Texan hick instead of your _amant_." He pressed his lips together in a tight line and exhaled smoke. "He convinced you to visit that bastard your team calls a medic, and not only did I know you would go, but I knew he would do horrible things to you. I tried to make it as soon as I could, but unfortunately I was too late."

"Too late for what?"

The spy felt another lump beginning to climb its way up his throat. He felt a sudden weakness in his arms and a need to get up and move. Tossing the book aside, he swiftly climbed off of the bed and clasped his hands behind his back, pacing away from the bed with his eyes knotted.

"I told you not to do it, Lawrence," he murmured tensely, his back turned to the man who remained on the hard mattress on the other side of the van's cramped interior. "I… _fils de pute_, I _told_ you about electroshock therapy and _god damn it_, Lawrence, you did not listen to me!" On these shouted words he spun to look at the sniper. "You trust the judgment of a psychopath _Nazi_ more than you do _mine_? Because I am a spy? Because I am on the enemy team? You have no trouble being _fucked_ by me but God forbid you take my advice! You impetuous son of a bitch!"

They spent several roundabout heartbeats staring at each, long enough time for the flecks of spit that had burst from the spy's mouth to dry up into the atmosphere.

The spy was the one to break the gaze.

"I'm sorry," he whispered with a rare twinge of humbleness. He glanced back at the double doors at the back of the van. "I will leave. I have… things I must do."

"Wait—"

"_Au revoir_."

He slipped out of the door into the night.

It wasn't the first time he had abandoned someone who needed him in fear of his bothersome emotions taking reign.

That was the trouble with getting close to someone.

You actually start to _care_.


	25. The Cuckold

The medic wasn't a man that dreamt very often.

Each night he just set his spectacles aside, climbed into an empty double bed, squeezed his blurry eyes shut, and waited. If he was lucky, the next time he opened his eyes would be when his alarm went off.

At times he was something of an insomniac, waiting and waiting and hearing the hours struck from the grandfather clock down in the dining room. It wasn't a rarity for him to kick off the covers at three in the morning and creep on the tips of his toes down the steps to the kitchen, being filled with the sort of strange energy one only experiences during the witching hour. He'd pour himself a glass of cold milk and sit at the kitchen table under a squinting single light. It kept trying to tell him to go back to bed, the way it shown so unnaturally in the quiet darkness.

He rarely listened to it.

The previous night had been one of those nights—in fact, for the past several nights he'd found his insomnia getting increasingly worse. He tried to chalk it up to poor diet or too many hours spent alone in the office, but in his heart of hearts he knew that it was no coincidence that his insomnia got worse around the same time Grace moved into the guest bedroom.

They both knew that it was usually the man who had to hunker down on the sofa when domesticity began to strain itself, but _Gottverdammt_, it was his money that furnished that room. It was his money that paid the bills for the whole damn house.

The least she could do is let him have that one small dignity.

That previous night she came down around three forty-six to use the toilet, shuffling and stumbling with the sleepy zombie gait of someone unaccustomed to taking late night strolls, unlike her husband. She didn't even notice him as she made her way down the hall, but he noticed her.

She wore a set of light blue lingerie, one of those thin, gauzy baby doll nightgowns that were so popular, something he'd never seen her wear before.

He wondered if it was a gift from the BLU demoman. He knew Grace loved to indulge herself, but as of late she'd been careful spending her husband's money. She did draw the line at _some_ point.

Then again, it could have been something old that he just never noticed her wearing. He rarely noticed that sort of thing.

When she returned she decided to cut through the kitchen. She hadn't expected him to be sitting there at the table.

"Jesus, Heinrich!" she screamed, stumbling back and slapping her hand against her chest. She wasn't wearing a bra; her breasts were just barely visible through the thin cloth. "What the hell are you doing at this hour?"

"I could not sleep," he answered crisply, his jowls tightening as he pushed his glasses up his nose. There was something about her voice, that high-pitched Londoner chatter, that unnerved him at that time of the night.

She went to run an exasperated hand through her hair but stopped when she remembered the curlers. She sighed "When did you get home?"

"About midnight." He rose and grabbed the empty glass to bring it to the sink.

"Midnight," she repeated, gaping at him as he began to rinse the glass. "_Midnight_," she said again, now folding her arms over her chest and walking over to him, her bare feet slapping against the cold linoleum. "You come home at _midnight_ and you _still_ wonder why our marriage is falling apart?"

"I never wondered." He squeezed a generous amount of dish soap onto the scrub brush.

"That's far too much soap, Heinrich, please don't waste it." Unlike her husband, who had come from a well-to-do _Jüdisch_ family in Stuttgart, she was a child raised amongst the stinking ruins of post-World War II England. She valued the concept of waste-not want-not.

He threw a cold glare over his shoulder at her. "You never use enough soap."

"You don't need much soap to clean a glass, Heinrich."

The medic drew in a sharp breath through his nose and dropped the glass in the sink. The faucet was still running at full blast as he threw open the cabinet door. Steam was beginning to crawl into the air.

"_What_ is _this_?" He yanked a glass out of the pantry and grasped it with white knuckles, jabbing his finger at a very small brown smudge. She jerked her head back, her small pink mouth twisted into a frown. "_What is this_?"

"Honestly, Heinrich, it's not—"

"_Obviously_ you don't know how to clean anything! You—you are—_filthy_!" In a sudden implosion of rage he flung the glass onto the floor. It shattered with a sound that was almost deafening in contrast to the still night air, and the only thing louder was Grace's scream.

She had flown back against the refrigerator; luckily her bare legs remained unscathed.

"You are… you are nothing but _a filthy whore_!" Flecks of spittle flew out from his mouth, encased by a scarlet face twisted in rage.

"What the _fuck_ are you talking about, you crazy sodding bastard?" she cried, clutching her hands over her head. Her fingernails dug into her scalp.

"I know what you've done, you ungrateful _Zicke_!" A sharp pain stabbed him in the chest as the fact he'd been trying to ignore resurfaced in his mind. "You have been _unfaithful_ to me! You've been… you've been sleeping around like some—like some—" Words failed him. His face crumpled and his arms fell to his sides.

"Does this really surprise you?" While she was obviously quite angry, her question wasn't as malicious as it was painfully sincere. "Christ, Heinrich, does it really, _truly_ surprise you?"

The medic swallowed a hard lump in his throat and straightened up, staring at her with an almost helpless expression.

"What the hell am I supposed to do, Heinrich? I'm a human. I have _needs_. I have needs that for some reason you've just never been able to fulfill. Not _once_. I've put up with it long enough. Years, Heinrich. I've put it up with it for _years_. I don't—I don't know if it's because you're some kind—some kind of queer or—or maybe I'm just not pretty enough for you—"

"_I have an erectile dysfunction!"_ he hissed in the quiet tone only used behind closed doors. At that time of night there was no need for whispering, because all the ears that could have been listening were asleep.

He whispered because it was a lie.

He'd been trying to convince himself that that was the problem, that there was some physical issue that made him blush between the covers and bury his head in his pillow in shame. Hell, he _had_ been a doctor, hadn't he? He may have lost his medical license but that didn't mean he couldn't diagnose himself.

But that afternoon… well, that afternoon had proved that it wasn't quite as simple as some hormonal imbalance. There was no denying that fact in the latrine, his trousers around his ankles as he hurriedly tried to wipe away the shameful mess of lust.

The slightest memory made him keep his eyes squeezed shut that morning; he had barely gotten any sleep and would have loved nothing more to rest the whole damn morning, but once the alarm clock started ringing he could never really get back to sleep. It never hurt to just lie in bed for a bit, though.

He swallowed and shifted to the side, flexing the cold fingers that were exposed—it was starting to get cold outside. He made a mental note to wear his wool coat to work on Monday.

He always slept with his hands over the covers. It was an old habit—when he was little his mother would check on him just before bedtime and slap him if he had his hands under the covers. For the longest time he was never quite sure why. Of course, that changed when he took anatomy in college and finally realized what sex was.

He was a late bloomer.

There was something about sex that, for lack of a better term, never really sat well with him. Even after he learned what it was, through a rather uncomfortable after-school discussion with his anatomy professor, there was still something about it that seemed so... out of his league. At times it was almost perverse to him, even though he knew it was a perfectly natural process, but for the most part it was just something he couldn't quite wrap his head around.

Unlike most boys his age, when he was a teenager he'd spent his free time pouring over textbooks on the pancreas or picking apart one of the dead rats the cat had left on the doorstep, and that was good enough for him. It wasn't like he had any schoolboy friends to tell him about their sister breasts or anything… he never really had friends, growing up.

Maybe that was his problem. Maybe by keeping to himself and spending those prime years looking at skeletons instead of nudie pictures, he'd warped his view of the body for good.

He groaned and rolled over to the other side.

What would _he_ know? He was as far from a psychologist as they get. The closest thing he knew was a few basic functions of the cerebellum and the thalamus and the reticular formation and other such brain bits, but he had an awful habit of getting them confused.

The heavy weapons guy was absolutely right. He typically was. Despite his frustratingly loose grasp on the English language, he had a habit of slapping common sense into his teammate. Not literally, of course; one swing of his hand and he could snap a spine like a brittle pretzel.

Regardless, the heavy was right. He shouldn't have messed with the sniper like that.

The medic felt a sudden clench in his stomach as he began to recall his fingers slicing through the man's hair, the feel of his sweaty scalp as he screamed in pain, the vein on his forehead bulging in panic as his blood pumped fast…

The doctor slipped his right hand underneath the covers.

The more he went to work, the plainer he found blood and guts to be. He was growing desensitized to them, but there was still something so fascinating and arousing about pain.

The concept of a bloodless pain, and pain condensed completely in the mind… no tell-tale signs, no release… just a trapped, screaming agony…

Oh, _god_.

He cautiously guided his hand down lower, moving carefully.

An unintended fantasy suddenly flashed through his mind. He saw himself strapping the sniper to an examining table, a _proper_ examining table with _real_ restraints this time, and shocking him over and over again. At first he was screaming for him to stop past that pathetic mouth guard, screaming in his stupid accent "PLEASE DOCTOR I'LL DO ANYTHING DOCTOR" and oh he listened alright but just grinned as the sweat trickled down his back in anticipation, he just kept turning the crank and twisting the dials and letting the shocks stab his mind like fucking _Psycho_ through a motel shower curtain and _Gott in Himmle_ it felt so good.

_It felt so good_.

His muscles were tense and stiff like rigor mortis, a subconscious preparation for fight or flight because deep down there was still that part of him that held the sexual innocence and curiosity of a schoolboy.

With a groan that he messily stifled through tight lips, he kicked his leg to the side.

Something small and solid rolled off the bed and hit the floor with a _thump_.

He gasped and swallowed, frustrated that a nagging imperfection had the audacity to dare interrupt while he… well…

He didn't want to give what he was doing a name.

Furrowing his eyebrows, he turned over again with the image of bloody scratches dripping down an anonymous back, but something else nagged him again, another small, solid object that had found itself on his mattress.

"_Scheiße_!" he growled, flinging himself up into a sitting position to see what was rolling around on his bed. Everything was a blur at first; he slapped his hand around on his bedside table, feeling for his glasses. When his touch met the cool metal of the frames he slipped them on and looked around.

Small, feathery balls of white littered the coverlet like a battlefield, every little neck snapped with the artistic precision of a vengeful Picasso of an assassin.

At first he couldn't form words. At first it seemed like some nightmare, his sick fantasy gone out of control. As much as he tried the little corpses wouldn't go away, they wouldn't hope back up to life and sing, sing for their daddy that loved them…

His birds.

His _babies_.

For a moment it felt as though he was about to scream, but that train of descent was stopped short when he felt a light drip on his shoulder, beckoning him to look up.

The word on the ceiling was painted in blood, blood mixed with small downy feathers saturated in red and the occasional broken heart string. The medic was in no position to judge penmanship, but I assure you, dear reader, that whoever scrawled this cryptic phrase over the doctor's bed had a wonderfully steady hand.

The word '_RACHE'_ stared down at him with its heavy weight of vengeance, its gaze that didn't exist but continued to stare. It imprinted itself in his mind, seeped its bloody message through his bulging eyeballs.

It was then that the medic screamed.


	26. The Call

The sky was overcast, and the typically dry, orange desert was an empty gray.

This was the last week they'd be there. They'd be sent to the Coldfront base in a short while. Apparently that's the logical thing to do, when the weather starts to get cold; go someplace even colder.

The sniper couldn't pick his finger on why he'd bummed a dime from the scout and was standing by the telephone, fiddling with the coin slot while he listened to the dull ring of impatience through the receiving end. He just felt very… _down_.

Maybe it was the headaches he'd been having for the past several days—they'd been happening less and less as time went by, but they were still coming.

Maybe it was the way the spy had left him so abruptly and avoided him for the past three days the next week—every so often he felt as though he could see a slip of blue out of the corner of his eye, but it was just his mind playing tricks on him. He couldn't help but wonder if the spy was even coming into work.

Or maybe, maybe it was the medic, and the way he stopped shaving and would duck behind buildings in the middle of the battle to stick his face in his medigun and breathe in deep like he was the only person in the world.

Or maybe it was just because it was getting cold.

"G'day, Mundy residence."

Her voice warmed his insides like hot cocoa. "Mum?"

"Lawrence?" There was something comforting about her just saying his name; at times he had this silly, irrational fear that one day he'd call her and she wouldn't know who he was.

"Yeah."

"What's wrong, Pumpkin? You sound upset."

He sliced his fingers through his hair. It felt a bit greasy. "Nothing's wrong, Mum, I'm fine. I just—just wanted to talk to you. That's all."

"Okay, love. That's fine."

There was a moment as they listened to each other breathe.

"So, how've you been, Mum?"

"Oh, I've been fine. Your father and I have been re-wallpapering the toilet." There was the clink of what sounded like kitchen utensils. She sighed. He wondered what she was making. Pie, maybe?

His stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten all day.

"And how's dad, then?"

"Oh, you know him. He threw an awful fit this morning when the lawnmower jammed. He's got such a temper, your father."

"Yeah."

The sniper cleared his throat.

"Really, Lawrence," she said in that all-knowing way mothers tend to do. "Is there something you want to talk about?"

"No, no, Mum, I'm fine. Everything's fine. I just wanted to catch up, is all." Lying on the phone seemed easier than lying in real life.

"Well, alright." The kitchen tools clinked again. He could almost smell the pie through the telephone. "You'll be coming down for Sheila's birthday party in a few months, won't you, Pumpkin? It's just going to be family. Nothing too big."

"Oh—oh! Crikey, that's right! I almost forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, of course I will."

"Good. And—" She emitted that little gasp she got when she came up with an especially brilliant plan. "_You know what_—now that I think about it, I think I'll invite the Wilson's girl, too. I want you to meet her. She's such a sweet little thing—well, erm, maybe _little's_ the wrong word, she's sort of _plump_—not fat, mind you, just a bit _plump_. But she's sweet. She's just a doll. I think you'd like her a lot, Pumpkin."

The sniper frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was always his least favorite part of conversations with his mother. "I dunno, Mum. I don't think I—"

"Now, Lawrence, just because I said she's a bit plump doesn't mean—"

"No, no, it's not that, Mum. It's not that at all." There was a pain in his chest as he forced the words out of his mouth. If only he could make her understand. "I just don't want to get into a relationship—"

"Lawrence Eustace Mundy, you are thirty-five years old. You're not a teenager any more. It's time to stop driving around in that smelly old _van_ and find yourself a proper house. _That's_ probably why women don't talk to you; they know they can't rely on a man who lives out a van—"

"Mum!"

"I can't think of any other reason, other than how bloody _shy_ you can be. So bashful. I don't know why, you're such a _handsome_ boy."

"Mum…"

"Now, don't you go telling me that it's not true. I'm not saying it just because I'm your mother, I wouldn't lie to you. If you were ugly I would just say you had a nice personality or something—"

"Mum, listen, I—I gotta go."

"Oh." She knew she had touched a nerve. "Alright."

"Alright," he echoed. "I'll write soon."

She sighed, but there was no clink of kitchen utensils. No smell of pie. Just a sense of disappointment. "I love you, Pumpkin."

"I love you too, Mum."

"G'bye."

"'Bye."

He clacked the phone back onto the receiver, and for a moment his heart jumped when the waft of tobacco tickled his nose.

It was the wrong, kind, though.

"You look to be in a mighty sorry state, lad." The demoman, clad in a thick leather jacket, leaned against the telephone booth, and let the smoke curl out of his nose as he spoke. The cigarette was just a stub between his fingers and he stared at the sniper with his one eye in a way that seemed sympathetic; the sniper wasn't looking for sympathy, though. "Did Mum have bad news for ye?"

"Nah, it's nothing. No worries." The sniper scratched the back of his head and turned to head towards his van. He was beginning to feel an incredibly crushing sense of loneliness.

"Listen—_mate_," the demoman called after him.

The sniper stopped and glanced over his shoulder.

"A few of the lads and I are gettin' together at this wee pub in town for a pint. It ain't a far drive if you take the southbound. You can just follow us." He took another drag from the cigarette. "You look like you need a drink, mate."

The sniper chewed the inside of his cheek and nodded. "Yeah—yeah, I suppose you're right."

"Aye, now _there's_ a lad!" The sniper couldn't help but smile when the demoman grinned at him. "Scout'll be there, too, although I think he may be a bit late—"

The entrance of the base flung open and the engineer and the pyro bustled there way out. The engineer was carrying rolls of blueprints under one arm and his goggles and yellow hardhat under the other. Unlike the rest of the team, who typically changed out of at least the most cumbersome aspects of their uniforms, the pyro continued to be suited in his entire flame-retardant suit—the only different between this pyro and the one on the battlefield is that he carried a heavy, flowered purse rather than an axe.

The demoman didn't bother inviting the pyro along for drinks; just let him walk to the edge of the road, where he sat down cross-legged—waiting.

Eventually a black car with tinted windows would pick him up. Then he'd disappear just as a came; out of nowhere.

"Oy, Dell, you plan on joining us at the pub tonight, right?"

The engineer stopped short and frowned at the Scotsman. "Now listen here, fella, you know we ain't allowed to call each other by our n—"

"Ah, bollocks, ya pint-sized cowboy. There's no one here but us REDs."

The engineer's eyes, a blue that matched the sparks of a sapped sentry in both color and intensity, shifted around the area. "I wouldn't be so quick to say that, pardner. You know how the medic's said there's been a BLU _spy_ creeping around lately." His nose curled in disgust at the very thought of the BLU Frenchman.

The engineer was a quiet man, but he rarely let his extreme disdain for the spy be unheard.

The sniper looked down at his feet.

"Again, _bollocks_, I say! BOLLOCKS!" The demoman waved his hand in the air with a careless smirk. It was becoming evident that he'd already nipped the bottle way before he'd even considered going to the pub, but that tended to be a given with him. "I wouldn't trust that doctor as far as I could throw his obese friend!"

"_Obese_?"

The three men started when they realized that the heavy had somehow silently crept up behind the demoman and was listening to the conversation with narrowed eyes. He was wearing his teensy little reading glasses and a tweed jacket, and the bookish appearance would have been absolutely hysterical if it didn't appear as though he was about to commit homicide.

That is, homicide he wasn't being paid for.

Barring the glasses and jacket, the sniper still couldn't shake his astonishment at the man's ability to be so stealthy at his gargantuan size.

"What is the meaning of '_obese'_?" he asked the Scotsman darkly, cracking his knuckles.

"Aeeeuuuhhh…" The demoman stared up at the monstrous Russian, gaping like a fish gasping for water. The looming threat of having his skull bashed in sobered him up real quick.

"_Dangerous_," the engineer answered quickly, with a toothy grin. "It means 'dangerous', big fella. That's all."

"Oh!" The heavy's solemn expression brightened so suddenly it was as if his moods could be changed by a light switch. "I like the sound of that!" He made his fingers into guns akimbo and crouched into the bowlegged stance of an old-time cowboy. "I am heavy weapons guy—_most obese man in the world_!"

The sniper was glad he had his hat tipped down, because if the others could have seen him trying to suppress his grin they would have thought he was constipated.

That would have to be something he'd need to tell the spy, later—

The grin melted. When would later be?

"Er, anyway, listen, mate," the demoman cut in, intent on steering the conversation away from his word slip. "We're gonna hit the pub in town for drinks. You wanna come? A big bloody Ruskie like you, I'm sure you could drink us all under the—"

"I am not much a fan of alcohol." The heavy straightened himself up, his grin fading into a more composed expression. "But I will not pass up the chance to spend time with friends." His eyes softened and his brows were knitted together, and he glanced behind his back to the entrance. "We will invite Doctor to come along as well, _da_?"

The energy of the mercenaries fell considerably quickly upon his words. The medic had never been one that any of them thought of as a good drinking buddy, not since the beginning. But lately he'd been increasingly uncomfortable to be around, the way he locked himself in his office and played gut-wrenching violin tidal waves behind the door, screaming through the music.

The demoman and engineer had locked eyes and were trying to telepathically come up together with an excuse as to why the medic shouldn't come along, when the doctor himself exited the building at a strangely early time. He wore a thick wool overcoat much too warm for this area of the country and clutched his violin case. He cast them a bedraggled glance with red eyes—either he had been huffing the kritzkrieg or crying.

Either explanation was plausible.

The sniper wasn't sure how the engineer or the demoman reacted, but he quickly looked away. He couldn't remember exactly what happened during the electroshock therapy, but there was something about just looking at the medic that made him feel uneasy.

"Doctor!" The heavy grabbed the doctor by the shoulder as he passed by. "We are going to a pub for drinking and merriment. You will join us, _da_?"

The medic looked up at him, and then at the other men, who were all trying their damnedest not to look back at him. "You want me to _come_?" he said in a gravelly voice.

"_Da_!" the heavy answered, nodding earnestly.

When the medic agreed, the sniper felt an agitating churning in his gut.

Maybe it was just all the coffee in his empty stomach, begging him for some Rolaids.

Maybe it was a warning.


	27. The Mirror

"_Where did you get that hat? _

_Where did you get that tile?_

_Isn't it a nobby one, and just the proper style?_

_I should like to have one just the same as that!_

_Where'er I go, they shout 'Hello! Where did you get that hat?'"_

It was strange how such an empty part of the country could house such a loud bar beyond stretches of empty desert. The multicolored neon sign hanging in the cool night air flickered from years of foundations being shaken beneath it. The cars that were jammed in the parking lot couldn't be any less than ten years old apiece, but their owners still dared the long trip just for a pint.

"_If I go to the op'ra house, in the op'ra season_

_There's someone sure to shout at me without the slightest reason_

_If I go to a concert hall to have a jolly spree_

_There's someone in the party who is sure to shout at me!"_

Some people get really _happy_ when they drink. It really tells you a lot about a person, because someone you thought was serious and reserved could have his tie around his head and be singing along to a pub song that he didn't even know, right across the table from you.

Granted, the medic _was_ on his fifth beer.

The sniper had always been more of a sad drunk, but he didn't drink to drunkenness very often.

He pressed a cigarette to his lips.

Next to him, the scout was attempting to chat up a blonde woman from Tennessee. Unfortunately for him, she didn't seem to find his extensive collection of baseball cards half as impressive as he apparently did.

She kept casting glances at the sniper over the scout's head. It was wordless flirtation, and it meant absolutely nothing to him.

"_Where did you get that hat? _

_Where did you get that tile?_

_Isn't it a nobby one, and just the proper style?_

_I should like to have one just the same as that!_

_Where'er I go, they shout 'Hello! Where did you get that hat?'"_

On the other side of the table, the demoman had somehow managed to rouse not only the heavy and the medic, but an entire legion of toothless, red-faced old men in to singing some sort of drunken, table-banging sea shanty about hats, of all things.

He found himself watching them for a moment, stoically, feeling a dull sense of detachment sink into his chest. Even the medic was enjoying himself. Sure, he was pissed out of his bloody mind and had his tie wrapped around his head, but that didn't change the fact that he was happy.

The sniper turned and looked over his shoulder at the small, staticky black and white TV that hung in the corner behind the bar. It was playing an American football match. Not his sort of thing; he preferred regular footie. His eyes drifted away and for a moment he locked gaze with the mustachioed bartender. The man, who had been wiping a glass in his hands, paused to wink back at the sniper.

The small gesture took him by surprise, but a stiff grip on his shoulder didn't allow him to dwell on it.

"Enjoying yourself, pardner?" The engineer snapped open a cold beer as he sat down, smiling softly in satisfaction at the sound of the cool hiss.

The sniper took another drag from the cigarette, his hand subconsciously wrapping itself around the bottom of his empty glass. He shrugged and grunted, which seemed to be a good enough answer for the Texan.

The engineer tipped the bottle to his mouth, watching the sloppy performance across the table as it began to die down; the singers were starting to get sleepy.

"He ain't fit to drive home," the engineer muttered. The sniper looked at the medic, who had fallen asleep on the heavy's shoulder. If he had been someone else, the sight would have been almost cute.

"The big guy can probably take him home." The sniper's cigarette had been reduced to a butt. He flicked it into his empty glass. The embers sizzled in the shallow pool of beer that remained. "Lord knows I ain't. Just got my van cleaned on Monday."

It was one of the few highlights of the week; the stench of urine had decreased dramatically.

The engineer took another swig, swishing it around in his mouth a moment thoughtfully as he stared at the sniper. He gulped. "I'm assuming it didn't go well."

"What?"

"Talking to the doc about…" He glanced around quickly. "You know. Your _problem_."

"Oh." As if there was some awful force trying to make his night worse, the engineer's words triggered the sudden realization that his bladder was quite full. Inwardly cursing everything on earth and shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he answered, "No. Not really."

The engineer frowned, taking the hint that it was not a topic the sniper wanted to discuss. After pressing the bottle to his lips a third time, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said guiltily, "Look, Slim, I'm sorry. I was just trying to help. I thought—"

"Nah, Truckie, it's fine." He shook his head slowly and hoisted himself up from the seat, cracking his shoulders. "No worries."

"Where're you headed, Slim?"

"The loo," he answered urgently, sticking his pinkie finger in his ear as he took long-legged strides across the pub. Behind the bar counter, the bartender watched him walk with raised eyebrows before disappearing into the back room.

He pushed open the thick wooden door, relieved to find he was the only one in the restroom. He often found that things were easier when he was alone.

The entire weekend he'd been trying to solve the 'problem', as the engineer called it, on his own. He went to the doctor to get the man to stop him from peeing in jars, and instead he tries to fry his brain. The best thing to do, he figured, was to just try and handle it on his own. Besides, _you're_ the one who knows yourself the best, right? He didn't need any head shrinking just to piss in the john, right?

It was proving a bit more difficult than he expected. He couldn't quite explain what it was, but every time he tried to relieve himself in a toilet or by a tree or anything not in a jar he found himself overcome with an immense feeling of panic. He didn't even know why, and afterwards, when he'd just given up and filled another jar, he felt almost disgusted with himself.

Getting all worked up over taking a _piss_.

Well, there was no backing out now. He wasn't about to leave the bar and walk all the way to his van just so he could pee, when there was a perfectly good urinal mounted on the wall right in front of him.

He ran his fingers through his hair nervously, and then felt the urge to kick himself. For Christ's sake, he made a living _murdering_ people. He'd hallowed out the corpse of a water buffalo and _slept_ in it. He killed a fucking crocodile with his _bare hands_.

Here it was. Another challenge. That's how he should think of it; a challenge. He killed the crocodile, and now he was going to _piss on it_.

He unbuckled his belt, and then paused. "But why would I _piss_ on it—?" Then he shook his head and unzipped his fly, deciding that it would be wise not to question something if it was any sort of motivation.

He stood there for a long time, not really doing anything accept staring at the crack in the wall above the urinal. Occasionally he'd look down, shift his wrist to get a look at his watch, gage the minutes that had passed by.

That was okay. He just needed to take his time. He was a patient enough man—his line of work _required_ it.

It wasn't until someone else walked in that he began to panic again.

It was just some plan old average Joe looking to use the toilet. He didn't get a good look at him because he didn't dare take his eyes off that crack in the wall. Whoever the man was, he chose a urinal a few stalls away, took a piss like a normal fucking person, rinsed his hands, and left.

"Jesus H._ Christ_," the sniper groaned, hastily shoving himself back into his pants. That guy must have thought he was some kind of nut, just standing their holding his willy, not doing anything but staring at the bloody _wall_.

Running his hand through his hair again, he mindlessly paced towards the door, then stopped, and in a sudden fit of frustration kicked the garbage can as hard as he possibly could. An echoey bang escaped its mouth; it hadn't toppled over, but the sniper left a dent so large that it appeared as if the pail was keeling over in pain.

He went to kick it again, but just dropped his leg to the ground, weak and tired.

He trudged to the sink, turned the faucet on ice cold and splashed his face over and over again. Then he switched it to the hot water and let the steam crawl over the mirror, obstructing any view of his face; he liked it that way. He mulled his hands around underneath until the water got to hot to bear. Then he just leaned against the sink and let the steam creep around his neck.

He closed his eyes, hoping the steam would clear his mind. There was something comforting to him about warmth. He tried to focus on just the feel of the heat and block out the sound of the running water, because God knows it didn't help.

A squeaking sound made him snap them back open.

Letters were carefully forming on the mirror, appearing out of thin air, right before his eyes. For a moment he couldn't even read what they said because he was too dumbfounded by the fact they were there, being written by an unseen pen.

It was only after the sentence was complete, when steam began to already climb over the newly formed words, that he realized what it said.

_Please go to your van, Lawrence._

Then it clicked.

He spun around and began to grasp around wildly in the humid air. He could almost see the vaguest outline of a form being given away by the condensation that hung in the tight restroom, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

"_This better _not_ be who I bloody think it is!_" he growled, curling his hands into white-knuckled fists.

Another squeak on the glass beckoned him to turn back around.

_Oh, but it is. Stop being an idiot and go to your van._

"What—_why_?" the sniper demanded, feeling like a fool for yelling at a foggy mirror. "_Really_, mate, enough with the bloody parlor tricks! Not being all vague and—and _spooky_ is the _least_ you could do right now after ignoring me all bloody week—!"

"I wasn't _ignoring_ you," the spy sneered as he materialized into view, leaning against the wall next to the mirror with his arms crossed. He hadn't changed out of his usual blue suit and balaclava. "It may seem hard to believe, _mon loup_, but there is more to my job than stabbing backs and messing with your engineer's toys. For example, I am working right now. I am also telling you to go to your van."

"But _why_?" the sniper asked exasperatedly.

"I will meet you there and explain everything." He disappeared into the air, leaving in his wake one more word scrawled across the mirror.

_Ciao_.


	28. The Wolf

The night air had trickled down to a thin, gray blanket.

It wasn't exactly cold, but the sniper couldn't ignore the fact that the tip of his nose had been nipped by a light chill.

He had hurriedly grabbed his jacket off of the back of the chair, hastily informing his teammates that something had come up and he'd have run off. The demoman tried to get up to give him a hug goodbye but instead ending up turning the table over. This, in turn, woke up the medic and sent him into a fit of rage when someone's beer spilled itself on his lap.

When the heavy had to wrap his arms around the medic's neck to keep him for clawing out the demoman's last eye, the sniper took the commotion as a chance to slip out unnoticed

The engineer had cocked his head at him, ignoring the uproar and instead silently watching as his teammate slipped out the front door.

Hustling through the parking lot, the sniper pulled his keys out his jacket pocket.

A sleek silhouette was leaning against his van with his legs crossed, cigarette in hand.

"So the ornery alley cat decided to listen." A smile crept on his face and his sighed, shifting his eyes to the wet pavement as he placed the smoke back between his lips. "Good."

The sniper stuck his hands in his pockets, shifting on his feet as the sensation of desperation weighed down his lower abdomen. His heart was pounding wildly against his chest—maybe it was from the running. Maybe it was something else. "So what is it?"

"I will tell you soon enough, _mon loup_." The spy took one last drag and flicked the cigarette onto the ground. "Let us get into your van."

"Erm, okay—alright." The sniper jogged around the front of the van and fumbled with his keys.

The spy was already sitting in the passenger's seat when he climbed in. He threw a glance at his companion, pausing a moment to wonder whether or not he should question how the spy was able to get into the van before him, but this _was_ the spy, after all. He could probably pick locks with his tongue.

"So, where to?"

"Anywhere. Nowhere. Just drive."

So the sniper just drove.

He just drove out of the parking lot and just drove onto the empty stretch of highway that crawled into darkness, melding itself with the sky to create a destiny of unknown for our two mercenaries.

"What's that thing you call me?" The sniper broke the silence with a few minutes into the ride.

"What thing?"

"Er—I don't know how to pronounce it." The sniper shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was beginning to regret buckling his seat belt. "_Mon-loo_?"

"Oh,_ mon loup_?"

"Yeah. That. What does it mean?"

The spy chuckled as he stared ahead.

"Oh, crikey," the sniper groaned, wrinkling his nose. "It ain't something stupid and girly, is it?"

"No, no. _Loup_ means _wolf_. You are _mon_ _loup_. _My wolf_." He took this moment to peel his mask off of his face, his black hair slightly mussed at the top and a bit of sweat beaded around his ears and nose. The silver peppered around his ears was almost luminescent in the darkness.

"Oh." The sniper cleared his throat again, tearing his eyes away after he realized he'd been staring at the spy longer than he had been the road. "That—that's not too bad." He drew in a deep breath of air, then said, "Listen, lad, there's a jar in the glove compartment, would you pass it to me?"

The spy furrowed his eyebrows and frowned. "Why?"

"You know _exactly_ why, mate, just hand it to me, alright?"

The spy stared at the sniper with narrowed eyes for a moment, and then pushed open the glove compartment and reached his hand inside.

"Brilliant, thanks—"

He pulled out a jar, but didn't hand it to the sniper. Instead, he swiftly rolled down the window and tossed it out as if it were an empty beer can.

The sniper's foot jammed on the break. "What the bloody _hell_ did you do that for?" He clawed his seatbelt off of his body and scrambled out the door, running, hoping, praying that maybe, just _maybe_ it had landed daintily on a soft patch of wet grass, sparing it from any harm.

No such luck.

Its shattered body streaked across the pavement, glittering like diamonds under the moonlight.

He gaped down at the fragments of glass with darting eyes that didn't quite know where to rest themselves.

That was his last jar. That was his last empty jar.

"What a shame," drawled the spy over the sniper's shoulder. "I suppose you will just have to do without."

The sniper spun on his heel and grabbed the spy by the front of his jacket, his mouth twisted into a snarl. "_That was my last jar, you sodding bastard!_" he spat viciously, shaking the Frenchman hard enough for his brain to have somersaulted twice in his skull. "_That was my last fucking jar, you bloody bogan_—"

The spy's fist collided with the sniper's jaw—the shock of the hit relaxed his fingers from their grip, and the spy wriggled himself out of the clutches of the bushman, walking backwards and dusting his suit jacket with a sour expression.

The sniper blinked stupidly a few times and lowered his hands.

"I know what that means," the spy said in a particularly acidic tone. "_Bogan_. It means low class." He stalked forward a few paces back to the sniper and stuck his finger in the man's face. "If you _ever_ call me that again, bushman, I will—"

He cut himself off with a heavy sigh. He lowered his hand. His expression softened into something weary and sad. "You look pathetic, Lawrence."

The sniper swallowed. He hadn't realized how tense he was until the spy pointed it out. He looked down at his fists, clenched and white at the knuckles. "I—I don't know what to do," he admitted quietly, staring at the points of his boots.

"It's not very complicated."

"Well, it—it is for me. I don't know why, but it just is."

The spy cocked his head and stared at the person standing across from him, analyzed the lines of his face as if he was hoping there was some sort of manual written across it, some sort of pamphlet on how to handle the emotions of other people.

He broke the eye contact and walked back towards the van. "Just unzip your pants and piss, Lawrence. Every man can do it."

The sniper frowned, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He could hear the spy's foot steps grow softer. He glanced over his shoulder; he was leaning against the side of the van again, like he had been before, watching.

The sniper swallowed and whipped his head forward.

He really had no choice, now. There were no jars left.

_Piss on the crocodile_, he tried to tell himself. But the failed mantra had no effect on him other than the fact that he once again couldn't help but dwell on how stupid it sounded.

He unzipped his pants.

Almost immediately, his sight was completely obscured by a quick hand in a black leather glove. He gasped, and a sensation of tingling fear shot through his lower belly.

"What—?"

"_Shh_." The spy's lips brushed ever so slightly against the sniper's ear. He exhaled hot, spicy air and it crept against his cheek and the side of his jaw. It warmed his prickly stubble. "Don't speak. Don't think. Just listen."

"Listen to what—?"

"_Don't. Speak_. _Listen._"

The sniper.

There was the steady sound of his heart—it seemed almost unnaturally loud. It wasn't racing like it had been before, it was at a natural pace, but it just seemed so damn loud. He could hear the spy's heart too; he could just barely feel it thumping against his spine. There hearts were pumping gallons of hot blood, sloshing like rapid rivers

He felt a sudden awareness of his own mortality. He tended to forget it, even more so than most people probably did, because he had died so many times it seemed like death was just like blowing your nose.

But outside the base, outside the battlefield, there weren't any magic guns or respawn systems that could repair the intricate circulatory system that he just remembered existed.

"You're thinking," the spy muttered. "Don't _think_. _Listen_."

This time, however, instead of listening to the sounds of their hearts he was listening to the spy speak. He didn't have the faintest clue what he was saying; he was speaking in French.

It was likely that he would never learn exactly what the spy was saying to him, but he was a smart enough bloke. He could gather from the inflection in his voice that he was telling a story. Maybe it was one of personal experience, or maybe it was a bedtime story that his mother had told him thousands and thousands of thunderstorm nights.

This, of course, was all considered after the fact. He didn't think about it at the time. He didn't think at all. He just listened to the foreign words melt into each other and flow like a steady tide, like everything in the world that is cyclical and natural.

When the spy heard the steady stream of liquid finally greet the earth, he didn't think to stop.

The story wasn't over yet.


	29. The Stranger

"Oh, that's—_crikey_, that's—_ah_—"

"Good?"

"_Mmph_—yeah—"

The small window above them was just slightly cracked open—the van had a tendency to get stuffy. Every so often a silent breeze would creep through and chill the sweat on the sniper's bare chest. His shoulder blades sliced against the sheets and his fingernails dug into the nap of the spy's neck as he clung with a grip iron enough to choke the man.

Through the window was the steady orchestra of crickets and the occasional passing car. They took no notice to these sounds, as they were both quite busy.

In fact, it took several knocks for them to realize someone was urgently banging on the side of the van.

"_Fuck_," the sniper groaned breathlessly in exasperation, pushing the spy off of him. The Frenchman wrinkled his nose, his simmering irritation resembling that of a cat that had been pushed into a pond. "Who the bloody _hell_—?"

"Hey, Slim?" The voice came out crisp through the tiny window made something sour fall into the pit of the sniper's stomach. "Slim, could you open up? There's—there's a bit of an emergency—"

The spy groaned and slid of the bed, bending over to quickly gather up the discarded pieces of his suit. The sniper sat on the bed and watched him for a moment as the engineer continued ramming his fist against the door.

The spy glanced over his shoulder. "I suggest you stop staring at my rear end and see what the hillbilly wants, Lawrence," he whispered with a slight grin, hastily fastening his cloaking watch around his wrist.

The sniper grunted in response and heaved himself out of the bed, feeling more aggravated than urgent.

"Slim? Slim!" More banging.

"I'm coming, I'm coming! Hold your bloody horses!" he shouted back, yanking on the pair of pants that had been cast onto the floor. The spy bundled his clothes underneath his arms and slipped into the small closet across from the bed, fading into nothing.

The sniper slipped his undershirt on and went to open the door, but paused to stick his hand into the crotch of his pants and adjust himself, which had not quite calmed down from the recent events, for a more subtle greeting.

The engineer exhaled in relief as soon as he saw the sniper. "Thank God," he sighed, slumping against the side of the van and closing his eyes.

The sniper descended a few steps, his bare feet feeling unnatural against the cold, sandy metal. "Something wrong?"

He realized it as soon the words flew from his lips. With his mechanized hand the engineer was cradling his right arm, which was wrapped in an old rag that had a stain of blood blossoming in the middle. He clutched his hat, a brown ten gallon, in his wounded hand.

"_Crickey_, Truckie, what happened to you?"

The engineer opened his mouth to speak, when then sighed again. He didn't seem disturbed so much as he did exhausted.

The sniper hesitated, but then caved as the begrudgingly courteous side of him took over. "Why don't you come in for a minute? I'll make some coffee."

He could have sworn he heard the spy groan from inside his closet.

"Thanks, pardner." He followed the sniper up the tin steps into the van. "No coffee for me, though. I don't drink the stuff."

At once the sniper began to attempt to tidy up the van, hastily smoothing the sheets to his bed and kicking his socks underneath. "Sorry about the mess," he mumbled.

"Don't sweat it, hoss," the engineer said, shaking his head and slowly sitting down on the slightly less rumpled sheets. He swallowed and took a moment to glance around. "You—er—you got chapped lips?"

The sniper cocked his head at the engineer, and then followed the other man's gaze down to the open tub of Vaseline lying on the floor. "Oh!" He scrambled to grab it, hoping the engineer wouldn't notice the fact that his ears were turning beet red. "Yeah—er—always get chapped lips around this season." He quickly slid the closet door open and tossed it inside. There was a very soft "Oof!" as it presumably hit some part of the spy, and the sniper attempted to mask the grunt by clearing his throat very noisily.

"So." The sniper crossed his arms and leaned against the closet door. "What happened to your arm, mate?"

"Oh." The engineer glanced down at the injury as if he had forgotten about it. "Well, you'll never believe this, but… the bar… well, the bar sort of blew up."

"Oh, _Christ_, did the demoman get _that_ bloody drunk? I thought after the last—"

"No, no." The engineer shook his head. "It wasn't him this time, it happened when I was trying to drag him through the parking lot. He's sleeping like a baby lamb in the back of my truck right now."

"Is he alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, not a scratch on him, the lucky bastard." The engineer shifted his arm a bit and winced.

The sniper knotted his eyebrows, frowning. "It hurts?"

"Nah. It ain't too bad. Just a bit of shrapnel that I managed to dig out. I'm mostly just shook up about it, is all."

"Well, if it wasn't him, then what happened?"

The engineer shrugged, idly fingering the band around his hat. "To tell you the truth, they haven't got a clue. We stuck around and waited for the cops and the EMTs to show up. It was a downright mess, let me tell you. Nastier than a respawn room on the fritz."

"_Crikey_."

"I'm just glad none of the fellas got hurt. The big guy took the doctor home just before and the kid's mother picked him up hours ago. _Jesus_." He looked down at his hat. "Can you imagine what a leg up BLU would've gotten if one of us got caught in that?"

And then the wires connected.

Bars don't justblow upout of nowhere.

And spies don't just _show up_ for no reason…

So that's why the spy had been so urgent to get the sniper to his van—he was really just looking to get him out of the _bar_. Part of him was touched by the action, and the other part of him was furious and disturbed, because he knew damn well that the contract said ceasefire off the job.

"Say." The engineer's voice, tinged with curiosity, broke the sniper's train of thought. The Texan had bent over with a soft grunt and was pinching something the size of a thumbtack off of the floor. "What's this?"

The sniper took one casual glance, assuming it must have been a bullet casing or something equally mundane. He glanced again when he realized it wasn't.

"I feel like I've seen this before," the engineer mused in a low voice, holding the cufflink up to his nose and squinting. His analytical blue eyes absorbed the design with the darting speed of a hummingbird.

"Er, maybe—maybe you've seen me wearing it before," the sniper improvised lamely. He went to snatch out of the engineer's hand but the Texan jerked it away and continued scrutinizing it. "Hrm. Two crossed pistols. Not exactly a common motif. Looks like a custom. You said this was yours?" He glanced up at the sniper with one eyebrow raised, his mouth bent into a skeptical frown.

"_Yeah_, it's—"

"Don't know why a man in your line of business would choose _pistols_. I don't think I've ever seen you use one—" He cut himself off, stopping short like a malfunctioning machine. His eyes, wide open and piercing, piercing blue, seemed to envelope the sniper with their intensity, and just when he thought they were going to devour him, the engineer flickered his eyes back down at the cufflink, still remaining disturbingly silent.

His jowls shifted and his Adam's apple bobbed as he forced spit down his suddenly dry throat. "You know, pardner," he said in a steady tone, standing up cautiously and glancing around the van as if he were being watched. "I… I best get going. The Missus must be pulling her hair out with worry."

"Oh, yeah. Sure." The sniper scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably, watching the engineer as the man tiptoed through the van as if he were expecting to step on a sneakily laid mine. "See you tomorrow, then."

He cleared his throat when he got to the door. "Yeah—er—goodnight, Slim."

The door slammed behind him with a force that ran shivers up the sniper's spine. The engineer's little steps were quick, and then faded soon into the screech of tires.

The sniper turned to find the spy dressed and sitting on the edge of his bed, his shoulders slumped and a cigarette dangling from his lips. His eyes seemed hallow and old.

"You blew up that bar, didn't you?"

The cigarette smoke flowed like a cycle, sucking itself deep into the spy's lungs and curling back out through his nose. "It is not my place to answer that question."

The sniper plucked the cigarette out of the spy's mouth and put it to his own lips, subsequently receiving an especially dirty glare. "What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with you, mate?"

The spy stared at the floor, having drifted off miles away for a brief moment. When he looked back up, he said, "_Claude_."

The sniper furrowed his eyebrows and removed the cigarette from his mouth. "What?"

"My name is Claude."

The sniper gaped at the Frenchman, whose expressionless poker face gave him absolutely nothing. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Someone needs to know." He held out his hand expectedly, his eyes still cast aside. The sniper placed the cigarette back into the fingers of its rightful owner. The spy took a drag and closed his eyes meditatively, and when he opened them again he said, "I grew up in Paris."

The sniper sat down on the bed as well. "That doesn't surprise me."

The spy finally looked at him, only to raise his eyebrow and smirk. "France is more than just Paris, you know."

"I know, but it still doesn't surprise me."

The spy snorted but did not smile. He was quiet for another smoke-filled moment. "Lawrence," he finally said, his voice low and clear. "Please be careful with the things that I am telling you. Treat them like fine china. Polish them every once in awhile. Make sure that they last, if only in your mind."

The sniper didn't say a word, but watched the spy with an understanding and a readiness to listen.

The spy took another drag from the cigarette. "My mother's name was Eloise Marie. As for my father, he could have been a number of men. Sometimes she said he was a roaming gypsy storyteller with a gold earring. Other times he was a British ambassador. The stories got more outlandish as she began to lose her mind, but regardless, I never met him. I was a bastard. The son of a _whore_." The smoke that was released with his last words was poisoned with a bitter acid. "She ran a fruit stand, but it did not bring much fruit to the table. She did tricks on the side and everyone knew about it. You can imagine the schoolyard nicknames." He ran a hand through his hair. "Of course, I didn't go to school very often. I ran around with the rats and broke into homes and picked-pockets."

The sniper tried to imagine the spy as a child, dirty and ragged and feral, digging in garbage bins and running from the police on calloused feet.

It didn't seem right.

"I was quite the little criminal, although when the War came around I started my first work as a spy, smuggling notes for people I didn't realize were important until after it was all over. It was around this same time that my mother began to go insane." He paused to clear his throat. "I suspected it was syphilis, but when she was institutionalized they never bothered looking into it. They just fed her every once in awhile until she ended up having a fit and choking on her own vomit."

The sniper's initial reaction to cringe was overridden by a sudden realization—that time after they ate at that diner and the spy got sick… He must have associated it with his mother…

The spy ran his tongue across his teeth thoughtfully, and then said, "I was a horrible son. I never visited her. I never did anything for her. I hated her—I hated her for who she was, and what she made me." His eyes seemed dull and distant as they traveled to the floor, and for a moment he seemed as if he was going to stop all together, but he kept speaking. "After she died I got involved in a large mafia organization in Italy. I killed my first man on a beach in Algeria. Almost got the guillotine for that."

For the first time that night, he chuckled, as if the thought of execution brought back fond memories.

"Eventually they all died as well, and then I worked with the Yakuza. During a failed heist in Chicago the CIA captured me and instead of incarcerating me, they offered me a job. Of course, I said yes. I've never been one to take sides, honestly. You of all people know that."

The cigarette had been reduced to a smoldering stub. He dropped it on the carpeted floor and crushed it with his bare heel.

"I worked with them for a few years, was introduced by a colleague to BLU, where the pay was even better, and—" He finished with another heavy sigh. "You know the rest."

The sniper took a brief moment to digest the condensed autobiography. "And why are you telling me all this?" Was this not the same man that had been so stingy about even showing his face? There was something deeply unsettling about being told the private life of a spy.

The spy never told him why, but rather just insisted that they lie down. Neither was particularly in the mood to finish what they had started before, but that was something they both seemed content with.

The sniper could see the moon, high in the sky, through that small window that kept puffing in quiet little drafts. He could tell that it must've been pretty late, and he felt tired enough, but he wasn't sleeping. He could see the spy occasional blink, and he knew that he was awake as well.

Both of them were inwardly fighting the urge to doze off, if only for another minute of holding each other in complete silence.

They were like that for a long time.


	30. The End

_And thus ends _Smoke Wisps_. Working on this silly fan fiction, riddled with so many typos and mistakes and improbabilities, was meant to just be a side-project, a sort of writing exercise if you will, but it's also been a learning process and an outlet for growth and personal understanding. I know that sounds ridiculously cheesy, but it honestly has been. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart, to those who have drawn fantastic pieces of fanart to those who comment on each chapter with so much love and excitement to those who don't say a word but follow along to the very end in silent but unwavering loyalty. I cannot fully express how much your readership truly means to me, and I can only hope that this last chapter lives up to your fullest expectations. Thank you._

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><p>The sniper struck a match against the bottom of his shoe. The vibrant little flame was warm around his icy fingertips. It flickered as it hovered above the crackling embers of freshly pack tobacco.<p>

Pipe-smoking was a habit he found himself taking up almost every year around winter time. He wasn't sure why. His father had smoked pipes ever since he was a kid. It might have something to do with that.

He tossed the match away and sucked on the pipe, holding it steady between his teeth as he took a moment to place his fingers under his armpits for warmth. He didn't own much winter wear—he'd knitted himself a sloppy little argyle sweater (he'd graduated beyond scarves over these few months) and that helped a bit. Just a bit, though.

He wasn't used to this type of cold. It was cruel and unforgiving and left him numb and empty. The bush had been cruel too, certainly, but the type of cruelty he was accustomed to, the type he began to learn to enjoy in an almost masochistic way. There, things had been hot and tenacious and _alive_ and it was messy and violent and absolutely beautiful.

Here he felt as if all of his senses were muffled. The demoman said he liked the winter because it was quiet and still and as if the entire world had been tucked into bed. But that's what was so off-putting about it, to the sniper. It felt as if the world were never going to wake up.

Letting the hot, spicy smoke melt into the crisp air, he picked his gun back up. He was crouching behind a large, snow-covered rock and a few heavy crates in a mountainous, more remote part of the map. It was far off, but it was one of the choicer roosts. Good view, less people to run in and pester him…

A shiver ran up his spine. It was only the wind, and he knew that, but a part of him wished with a terrible longing that it could have been a delicate, gloved finger carefully guiding itself along his spine.

The spy had been gone for a long time, now.

It must've been about three months. The sniper didn't bother owning a calendar—the way he saw it he could tell everything he needed to know about the time of year by looking around outside.

But yes. About three months, give or take a week.

At first he assumed it was "part of his job", that he was off doing top secret spy things that were far more important than prodding backs. That was fine. After that last night they'd spent together, he could wait. Waiting was part of his profession, after all.

But days turned into weeks and RED went on an absolute winning streak. There was no spy to infiltrate their defense, nobody to mess around with their teleporters, no one to trip them up at the most inopportune of times, and no one seemed more chipper about it than the engineer.

He spent their battles wiping his precious sentries down with a rag, polishing them up real nice and humming some secret tune to himself.

The connection didn't form until he had one day found himself trudging through the midst of cheerful post-battle swirl in the locker room.

"I'll tell ya one thing, doc, I'll tell you _exactly_ why we're winning." The sniper noticed the engineer's voice climb over the buzzing chatter as he went to place his knife in his knapsack. "'Cause I got rid of that damn spy."

The knife had slipped from his grasp and clattered on to the ground, his blood freezing in his veins. No one seemed to take any notice and continued to revel in the slowly dwindling high of winning a battle. But at that moment, it seemed as if a vital cord had been violently yanked out of its socket, and it felt as though he could just helplessly stand there as millions of spiders with poisonous, stinging legs crawled through his chest.

"Oh, really, now?" It had been the doctor the engineer had said this to. The sniper had avoided him ever since that last visit, and there was something about his inquisitive, borderline chipper tone that made the horrible feeling in his chest seep into his stomach. "And _how_ did you manage to do that, Herr Conagher?"

"Ah, well, it's—to tell you the truth, doc, I already said too much. But rest assured he's gone, and he sure as hell ain't comin' back."

The blood that had frozen in the sniper's veins sent a prickling numbness throughout his entire body.

The medic lowered his voice, but to the sniper it was as if he were screaming. "You do realize murder outside the battlefield is prohibited?"

The engineer responded in an equally hushed tone as their teammates began to dissipate. The sniper stayed crouched by his knapsack, aware of absolutely nothing but the two voices on the other side of the room. "I didn't kill him, doc, I just… well, I caught him in a mighty… compromising position that happened to be against protocol, but it ain't my place to say anything else."

The sniper blinked, and realized his hands were shaking. He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. The room was suddenly hotter than the bush at high noon, and the oppressive heat and pushing down on the back of his neck and the spiders were crawling throughout his chest, burrowing deeper and deeper.

"It's got to be a relief, huh, Slim?"

The sniper's reaction was a beat late. Still hunched over his bag, he slowly turned his head, peering over his shoulder with blank eyes hidden behind his sunglasses.

"No more spy coming up behind you?"

And at that moment, the sniper realized exactly who the engineer was. The amiability was nothing more than a front, masking his cold, analytical contempt for the people around him. He had been staring back at the sniper, then, with his underbite grin and head cocked to the side, and on any other day the sniper would have written him off as a regular fella that he might want to have a few beers with. But at that moment, it was the grin of a malfunctioning animatronic puppet, with those soulless goggles looking absolutely nowhere.

"_Must've been a right pain in the behind_."

And then it was animal against machine.

The sniper couldn't quite remember what physically happened after that. At the time the only thing that seemed clear that the spy was gone. He realized at that moment that he had _finally_ found something, someone. Someone who smelled like spicy foreign tobacco and soft cologne and just a little bit of sweat when you buried your nose in his hair. Someone who kissed like a saint and fucked like the devil. Someone who saw him at his most vulnerable and still stuck by him. Someone who understand him. Someone who cared.

And that someone had been ripped from his grasp just as he was about to tighten his fingers.

The sniper couldn't remember exactly what happened after that. He just knew that consciousness came back to him like a blast of fresh air, and he was being peeled off of the engineer by the heavy. People had been saying things but it all came to him sort of muffled. He looked down at his knuckles; they were bloody and shaking. So was the engineer.

He didn't really talk to anyone, after that happened. Or maybe they didn't talk to him.

Either way, he just didn't talk.

The sniper took another lungful of the smoke and it made his chest tingle softly.

There was a crunch behind him in the snow, and the sudden sound made his heart give an emasculating flutter. He glared over his shoulder and was disappointed, and somewhat annoyed, to find the medic standing behind him. He didn't know what he was expecting. He knew it couldn't possibly have been the spy.

The medic stared down at him, his nose and ears cherry red, bundled up in his thick wool coat. "I just wanted to check on you," he told him, squinting past spectacles glittering with flecks of stinging, bothersome snow. "No problems, I trust?"

The sniper turned his head away from the medic without answering.

"I haven't had the chance to speak to you, Herr Mundy." He took a few steps closer, his hand reaching out to presumably rest itself on the sniper's shoulder—a gesture of pity that the sniper didn't want. "I noticed you no longer urinate in—"

"Is the middle of a battle really the time, doctor?" The sniper's voice felt craggy and rusted.

The doctor stopped in his tracks. "_Ja_. _Ja_, I suppose you are right." The sniper couldn't see him, but he could hear the dejection in his voice, the guilt that lingered in the crunch of his footsteps as he drifted away.

He didn't care if the medic felt guilty and wanted to make amends or pity him or whatever it was. He really, truly didn't care.

Out of the corner of his eye a flash of blue told him that he had missed a shot at the scout. He cursed under his breath. Just because RED was on a winning streak it didn't mean the sniper himself was. He had been starting to go entire matches without getting so much as one lousy headshot.

It didn't matter. He'd be quitting soon, anyway.

In the pocket of his jacket was a letter he had hastily scribbled that morning. Not to his parents, no, but to Jeannie Wilson, who ended up being just as plump as his mother insinuated, but nice enough nonetheless.

His mother had almost forcibly dragged him over to her at Sheila's birthday party (he'd gotten her a teddy bear, but he overheard Steve's wife saying it smelled like smoke and she wanted to throw it out). He had spent most of that afternoon sitting next to Jeannie on the couch, twiddling his thumbs and looking away uncomfortably each time they made eye contact.

She'd been writing him letters ever since, pages in pink ink about nothing in particular but between the lines she was absolutely begging for his companionship.

He spent a long time thinking about it, and then finally decided to comply.

_Also, Jeannie,_ he had written after the usual mundane cordialities, _I was wondering if maybe you would like to get married when I get back to Adelaide. I have enough money saved up to buy us a home and I can quit my job here and maybe take up a factory job or sell game. I think that would be nice._

Yes. It would be nice. It wouldn't be thrilling or satisfying or make chills run down his spine in animalistic excitement, but it would be nice.

There was really no point in defiantly living the rest of his life alone and angry because of one man, when instead he could go to home-cooked meals and a warm home. He knew he'd never be attracted to her, but maybe in time he'd learn to at least love her.

And in that time he'd be careful with what the spy—no, _Claude_ had told him. He would treat his past and his memory like fine china. Polish them every once in awhile. Make sure they'd last.

Maybe he'd open up the cabinet and pull them out on a rainy day, when the air is humid and the fog seems a little too similar.

He owed him at least that much.

The sniper took another drag from his pipe, held it in his lungs, and then let it back out into the frozen atmosphere that bit at the tip of his nose. For a brief moment, though, it seemed as if his heart stopped, because he could have sworn he saw a familiar face wink at him through the smoke wisps.


End file.
